419: A Scammer's Life

After a night of drinking cheap vodka and browsing The Internet Archive one night, I came across this webpage, a webpage that showed a survey that 100 E-Mail scammers answered. This inspired me to do something, to do my own survey.

My name is Clive Python, I like to consider myself to be a bit of a scambater, by this I simply mean I scam the scammer, I've only been doing this for a short time as of publishing this, but that really doesn't matter, I'm not the only one who does this, there are whole forums online dedicated to stopping scammers like our friends at 419 Eater (419 being the number that refers to the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud), I'm just one of many. But, why do I do this? Well, it's in hope that I can stop even just one person from being scammed (plus, it is quite fun annoying these criminals). I even show off my terrible scam E-Mails I get on my own website, it's quite a read!

Introductions aside, I was inspired to get a few scammers to fill out a few questions I made just for them, for this project I pretended to be William Saxon, a student studding to be a reporter in Glasgow, Scotland. Rather than asking one question like the website on the Internet Archive, I decided to instead ask nine. The set-up of my E-Mail was simple;

Hello there,
My name is William Saxon, I am a student studding to be a reporter in Glasgow, Scotland. For this, I am asked to go out of my way to try and talk to people from different walks of life. My current project that I am working on is law and order, where I look at the criminal justice system.

I have found your E-Mail as I am aware that you are a scammer, and as such it would be helpful to myself if you answered my questions.

1) Why do you do this and for how long?
2) Are you not worried about being found out by the police or any other government body? Why?
3) Have you made any money scamming people, if so, how much?
4) Do you feel any repent for your victims? Why?
5) How many E-Mail addresses would you say you have?
6) Do you wish you could make money in a lawful way?
7) What is your proudest moment?
8) Can you describe how your scam works?
9) Do you have any final word you want to say?

Thank you for your time.

- Saxon

I was a lucky boy that day, as I did get a few E-Mails back from people. Here are what they read:-

IN GOD I TRUST IN YOU I BELIEVE

The first E-Mail I got back was perhaps the best and worst thing I have ever seen. The response was from "Mrs Kantalisia Gored , a widow to Late Gored Anderson", in their first scam E-Mail that attracted me they wrote "I am 67 years old,suffering from long time cancer of the breast . From all indications , my condition is really deteriorating and is quite obvious that I may not live more than four months after my next surgery , because the cancer stage has gotten to a very severe stage ."

So do keep in mind that they are lying about having breast cancer, so their really not the best of people. Regardless, they wrote back, saying;

good day sir / mam deep tears in my eyes sir pls do forgive me for ,it is because of my poor background that is making me do this sir all i am looking for is for some money to leave this and to start up a Little business sir i beg of you sir ever since i have been doing that i have not scammed any one sir i beg of you to have the heart of forgiveness on me thank you ...may God bless ,....you if you forgive me Amen

NANNY AND A DRIVER NEEDED URGENTLY

Donald Smith... or Donald Lambert (their really not sure) is a "48years old" man who is "based and grown in Uk with my 3 years old daughter I am seeking for the services of a female Nanny and a male Driver preferable from the Usa or anywhere in the world to come and work for me in the Uk". You can really tell that this man is from the UK because not only did he wrote "Uk" and not "UK" with capitalized letters, but also the fact that his spelling and grammar is very poor.

Showing the world just who's boss, they just got back with, drum roll please. . . .

Huh lol

Very cool!