Has the Prince of Nigeria ever contacted you? Perhaps he said that if you gave him you bank account number he'd transfer his wealth into your account and pay you a handsome sum for the favor of allowing him to escape his awful life and blah and blah. Well it seems that someone may have caught up with the Prince... One Per Cent: Meet the Yahoo Boys: Nigeria's email scammers exposed
You wonder who could possibly fall for this . . . and then . . . our estate/trust lawyer recently told us that one of his clients, a prominent restaurant owner, came to him and said he needed to rewrite his will, because he would shortly be coming into $20 million. Turns out this man had sent, in small and then larger increments, more than $900,000 to Nigeria. And even when our lawyer showed him many articles on the 419, this man absolutely refused to believe it. He was certain that his money would arrive any day now.
The most interesting attempted phishing scam I have ever experienced was somebody who called my home phone claiming to be from Sprint offering me a $10/month deal on cell phone service. This was the most interesting to me both because it was the only time I ever spoke with a phisherman in a live conversation and because the conversation itself sounded much like a live chat with our dear friend "Ken Baker" from Must University.
Are you certain it was live? I ask, because last week, I answered a call from someone offering a car warranty extension service, and it was so cleverly done that I was 4 or 5 exchanges into it before I realized I was talking to an interactive recording.
Not quite sure if you guys are aware of that, but there are quite a few scam baiting forums around. These are dedicated towards responding to Nigerian spam mails, play an innocent victim and have some "fun" with the scammer. Among the most popular are probably ScamBaiting at it's finest - Fighting 419 Email Scammers - Nigerian Fraudsters and forum.419eater.com :: Index. They have a very very strong community spirit, with apprentice/mentoring programs etc. It is already making the list of potential hobbies for my next life
OK, so for me there are more questions unanswered here than are answered. Still, here's the story of how the scammers got scammed. When Nigerian Scammers Get Scammed - Global - The Atlantic Wire