Scamming the scammer | Hacker News Reader

Scamming the scammer

419eater.com

20 pointsvijayr9 comments

For any This American Life fans here, there's a great episode about these guys: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=3...

419ers generally justify what they are doing by claiming Americans are evil and deserve to be scammed. An interesting parallel here.

Yes. If scammers are motivated by greed and desperation, scam baiters seem largely motivated by a desire to humiliate, or just feel superior to the scammers. There is a 'trophy room' on that site where scammers are posed often naked, sometimes with their wives/partners) with juvenile signs, generally framed by the obvious trappings of poverty.

The website and the idea are really great. I can only advise everyone who doesn't know what 419 scam is to read this.

The sad truth though is that it works, there are people who still fall for this (419 scam) and there are also people who buy stuff when they see advertisement in their inbox (ad emails) - even if it's only 1 in 10000 it is enough.

There is a very simple rule: If you are a nobody and you get approached by somebody with an offer you are being scammed.

The only reason it works at all is because people don't stop to think "Hey, I'm absolutely nobody, why aproach me ?". That and greed...

How about desperation? It's easy to talk about our superior standard of living, but there is an edge, a steep edge and lots of people are near enough to it to consider crazy things.

Congratulations to Nicholas Okorie for being the first scammer on the planet to be suckered into having a tattoo!

I have a few more scammers going through the same process, and they are showing a little more resistance than Okorie. Just shows what sheer greed can do to you I suppose.

Okorie may or may not be greedy, but I would say he is desperate. He scams people because there are very few opportunities to make money in Nigeria. Of course it is not right for him to scam people, but the whole situation is not much improved by fighting back. As a result, Okorie becomes even more desperate and 419eater wastes his time.

Who knows, instead of scamming Okorie might switch to the kidnapping business or something.

How the hell would you know Okorie's motives?

it is very impressive that they spend so much time and energy in tracking down the scammers. great job. it must be fun, a bit risky also.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com