Stuart Pinfold

Scamming a scammer

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For the last month or so, I've been communicating with a fine example of a perfect human being, based in Dublin, regarding his daughter moving into my flat. I moved out before my contract ended, and was looking for someone to take over the remaining period in order for me to avoid paying two lots of rent. So, I posted adverts on Gumtree and similar 'community noticeboard' websites, and got an email from this person in Dublin.

Except they weren't in Dublin.

Nowhere near, in fact. And you could hardly call them a fine example of a human being: they were in Nigeria, and were planning to rob me out of over £4,000.

These '419' scams are now commonplace, and mostly originate in west Africa or Amsterdam. The most-used scam is a the story of a rich leader, forced into exile or killed in their own country, and whose close relations (sister, son, wife...) are trying to get large sums of money out of the country and into a western bank account - and your reward is 10% of the total of $28m if you help them out with the paperwork.

Except it won't happen.

They build up trust with you over the course of a few emails, make big promises, get you to email them (or 'their client', the same person on the end of a separate Hotmail address) basic details, and then sting you: in order to get your slice of early retirement in a mansion in the sun surrounded by cocktails and servants, you must pay a processing fee to their phoney 'clients' in the bank. This fee must be paid via Western Union, without delay... and, after the fee has been received, the big money can start moving.

Except it'll never happen.

Your £5,000 processing fee has just disappeared into thin air and re-appeared in the scammer's bank account, never to be seen or heard of ever again. And, as for the $28m, well, that'll be offered (perhaps with interest, who knows?) to the next person unfortunate enough to receive an email from them.

So, there's now a community of Internet users who are retaliating: they're scamming the scammers, with surprising and hilarious results.

I got a slightly cleverer (is that a word?) scammer emailing me about my vacant flat, unfortunately I didn't manage to scam them, but I did get sent a fake cheque for £5,500. Still, I (and my colleagues) think it's quite funny, so if you've got a spare 5 minutes, have a gander through and hopefully it'll raise a smile - perhaps even a chuckle...

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