Post: #1

TLDR is it takes just a few seconds to fuck over internet scammers by having them overnight a check to the Post Office Inspector General. Important point is to not let ego get the better of you by pointing out their mistake and making it a learning experience for them, just drop the conversation.

Number of years ago a friend pointed out that Craigslist was good for more than hitting on fat women with inflated standards, there was money to be made. Unlike that first obese 2 that broke my young heart and pelvis, it was love at first sight. Good deals, extra cash, then the scammers came along. Maybe it's my area but they've been getting worse and worse. Dead giveaway is that they will quote the exact title of your ad, followed by or led by a canned line. No actual buyers do this, every scammer does.

I used to ignore but had some time lately and was curious if they'd mail a check to any address I gave them, and just to see what the spiel was generally. The name and address circled in green is the USPS Inspector General, that's the office that handles mail fraud cases. They send huge messages which don't necessarily come through in the order they were intended but here's the exchange -


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While this was going on I made a few phone calls - to Attorney Generals of both states involved, the police in the town the WU was in, and WU itself. The scammer himself also called briefly while I was busy and ignoring him - definitely a Nigerian or similar accent. It is incredible how incompetent the system is. The Atty Gen rep didn't have a clue what to do and told me I'd have to submit something in writing and likely wait until after I was actually ripped off. The cops were concerned about where the check would actually be picked up because some areas of the county were outside their jurisdiction so "you'd really need to find out from the scammer where he'd be picking it up". WU said they could suspend the transfer as long as it hadn't been picked up yet but couldn't call any authority to make an arrest, they need to wait until after a scam goes through and transfer it to their fraud department who then gives the case files to police to follow up. I did consider buying the wire and immediately suspending it which would generate a bogus number to give to the scammer and further waste his time driving to the WU office to pick it up only to be turned down (would make sure to get the cancellation audio recorded to cover my ass) but WU website is total shit, it was like 1995 loading times all over again every line of information I entered so that didn't last long.

My thought, and something I said more or less to all of them was "This stuff costs billions a year in actual losses, fraud departments, police caseloads, attorney general caseloads. I'm trying to give you guys the name which will be used to pick up a fraudulent transaction and the town it will be picked up in. You don't have a system in place to respond to this before it happens, take this guy off the streets and probably save everyone involved a few million dollars?" Nope, they don't, they'd rather chase after an imaginary name on some fake ID after grandma gave her rent check for the month to the Nigerian mafia. Crazy.

Even a completely random address is better than nothing, if everyone these assholes texted cost them $10 to overnight their bogus checks to nowhere they'd go bust in a hurry.

Post: #2

you are only fucking yourself out of your precious time baiting them

the nigerian scammers time and life is worthless and you are lowering yourself to that level

the time you took to do these texts you could have had a hot 6 getting wet for you

and your nigerian scammer bait game sucks compared to 419eater

Post: #3

(05-01-2016 12:27 AM)Off The Reservation Wrote:  you are only fucking yourself out of your precious time baiting them

the nigerian scammers time and life is worthless and you are lowering yourself to that level

the time you took to do these texts you could have had a hot 6 getting wet for you

and your nigerian scammer bait game sucks compared to 419eater

The purpose of this was not your entertainment. As both the post and tldr made clear it's to show that with as little as a 30 second time investment you can cost these scumbags $10, as well as highlighting the incompetence of the system designed to bring them to justice.

Fucking over a criminal is not lowering yourself to their level. You need to recalibrate that moral compass if you honestly believe that. What was my total time investmentioned to send these texts do you think? As much time as it to you to write your opinion which I'm going to disregard?

419eater is news to me. In the time it took you to learn of its existence and read their pointless, if amusing, threads you could've been getting a "hot" 6, as they exist, wet. If that's your life goal.

Post: #4

There are many youtube videos showing how to wind up these scammers, I remember the days when I'd get a couple of emails from random addresses. You have to be a moron to go with it.

Post: #5

I just want to know what criteria you used to determine that they were "actually" Nigerian.

Post: #6

(05-01-2016 01:55 AM)Gorgiass Wrote:  

(05-01-2016 12:27 AM)Off The Reservation Wrote:  you are only fucking yourself out of your precious time baiting them

the nigerian scammers time and life is worthless and you are lowering yourself to that level

the time you took to do these texts you could have had a hot 6 getting wet for you

and your nigerian scammer bait game sucks compared to 419eater

The purpose of this was not your entertainment. As both the post and tldr made clear it's to show that with as little as a 30 second time investment you can cost these scumbags $10, as well as highlighting the incompetence of the system designed to bring them to justice.

It does not matter whether it is 30 seconds or 30 minutes or 30 days. You still wasted the time interacting with them. I seriously doubt your texting prices because they probably stole the phones, but for the sake of argument, you are saying you are saying you VOLUNTEER your time to cost them money. This means that your time no matter how small an increment is valued at zero. This is the equivalent (in the non criminal world) of me saying I hate Geico so I am going to watch as many commercials as I can and not buy their insurance. I am going to cost them thousands of impressions of ads that get them no sales and consume their ad budget. The problem is your individual consumption even if it technically "cost" them something is not measurable on the individual level. The texts, while you may think cost them $10, cost nothing. Because lets say they spent $1000 on texts, internet and calls to scam one old lady out of $10,000. That is their criminal scam ROI and they do not care about the victims that backed out, the people who did not respond or the baiters. They know the baiters exist and just keep dialing for criminal scam dollars and do not blink an eye at you. They are an automated machine replying to hundreds at the same time and take no notice to the individual variants of baiters or no go would be victims. You are texting an employee of a criminal enterprise whose boss has told them to keep the conversation with you, ten other baiters, 20 curious, and that one old lady that will send the money at the same time because they are not allowed to sit and critically think about which one will be the victim.

Fucking over a criminal is not lowering yourself to their level. You need to recalibrate that moral compass if you honestly believe that. What was my total time investmentioned to send these texts do you think? As much time as it to you to write your opinion which I'm going to disregard?

I did not say that you are morally lowering yourself to that level. What I meant is that you are lowering your value as a man to the level of or lower when you pay them with your words and attention even if your intention is good and is to somehow derail them. The time I spend writing my opinion is a VALUE because even if you do not care another man will gain from it and I will hone my reasoning skills by expressing it. This opinion is put out on a forum for rational men to ponder; texts to a scammer are bits of electricity and tiny amounts of time thrown away like garbage.

419eater is news to me. In the time it took you to learn of its existence and read their pointless, if amusing, threads you could've been getting a "hot" 6, as they exist, wet. If that's your life goal.


And I was suggesting the hot 6 for you as an alternative to nigeria baiting, because a hot 6 is a higher value than costing a nigerian scammer sitting in a lagos internet cafe $10.

My life's goals are to figure out how to make 7 million dollars in the next 6 years, establish a new benchmark after banging a 10 last weekend, own a Frank Lloyd Wright house by the time I am 60, own a Falcon 50 100% outright and be able to afford to operate it before I am 50, complete the 34 countries I need to go to have been to 100 soon, shed the time wasted with friends and clients who aren't the best for me, have 4 kids, design a special swimming pool I have sketched out, challenge myself to do more than I have done, leave some more bad habits behind, read a stack of books I have collected, and help people realize their value.

Post: #7

Fair enough. One of my goals is doing my part to leave the world better than I found it, and I count trying to lock up a crook or at least dent their business as part of that.

The $10 figure is based on the cost of them generating a fake check and overnight mailing it to a bogus address, in this case the office charged with investigating mail fraud. It took an investment of less than 30 seconds to get them to mail it out, and I'll be happy to make that investment again.

As I said in the post, I know it was a Nigerian or similar area because he called and had a distinct accent.

I'm sure there are YouTube videos of people trolling them, I've never seen them because I would consider watching that a waste of time.

Post: #8

If you had fun with it, and learned something, then why not? I agree with Off The Reservation though, that if you are interested in fighting crime, your time could be better spent.

Post: #9

I mess with those guys all the time. Great fun.

Post: #10

I stopped doing it after a while, I got tired of it, but I used to have copy and paste answers for those scammers ready for use on my desktop.

Basically, I was stating that I was a poor Eskimo living in Northern Canada, using a wind turbine to operate my laptop, and I was inviting them to come to live with me in my igloo, promising them never to starve because we could go seal hunting with homemade harpoons...

I did not have to block them, most of the time, a single message was enough for them to block me! LOL

Post: #11

(05-01-2016 04:06 PM)PABeaulieu Wrote:  I stopped doing it after a while, I got tired of it, but I used to have copy and paste answers for those scammers ready for use on my desktop.

Basically, I was stating that I was a poor Eskimo living in Northern Canada, using a wind turbine to operate my laptop, and I was inviting them to come to live with me in my igloo, promising them never to starve because we could go seal hunting with homemade harpoons...

I did not have to block them, most of the time, a single message was enough for them to block me! LOL

Wait... Is the eskimo thing true?

Ukuĝaan ix̂amnakux̂!!!