
Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012) - luu
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=167719
======
S4M
One thing I have been wanting to do for a long time about Nigerian like scams,
but never got around doing it, was the following: 1\. create some bait email
accounts from gmail, yahoo, and so on, and expose them somewhere on internet
so they get harvested by scammers. 2\. write a dumb program that is able to do
some primitive parsing of the emails from the scammers, and reply to them. For
example, let's say the email from the scammer is:

    
    
        Dear friend,
            I am the widow of the former Prime Minister of Nigeria and I need your help to get out of Nigeria where my life is threatened, along with the  $50M currently in my bank account. If you help me I am willing to give you 30% of that money, please reply me to see how we can proceed.
        Regards,
        Mrs Mary Noscam
    

The program would have just to reply something like:

    
    
        Dear Mary,
        I am very interested to help you, how can I help you to get out of Nigeria?
        Regards,
        Mr John Victim.
    

The point would be to make the scammer spend 10 minutes to read the reply and
answer to it. After couple of emails, he will probably realize that he has
been wasting his time with a bot, and just move on, but with lots of emails
responding, he will have much less time to deal with actual victims, making
his time worthless. I think writing a bot that is able to reply to the scammer
is quite doable, since:

    
    
        1. There are example of bots having actual conversation, such as SHRDLU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU) that was recently submitted here.
        2. The answer doesn't have to be very elaborate.
    

Now I think I got blocked by the fact of having to make the bot be able to
receive and send emails... maybe I will start that project some day...

~~~
kinkora
I can't remember what the website is exactly and I am currently at work now so
I won't be able to google it up but there was a person that use to do this
except that he didn't use a bot but "bait" the scammers himself.

It is utterly hilarious. What he does is he replies to a "scam email" and most
of the scammers will do anything once they see an actual human being replying
to their spam email. He obviously leads them on and his signature move is to
always try to get the scammer to post a picture of themselves with a card held
up (for verification purposes of course) and the cards usually say stupid
things like "ilikebukake". He collates all the emails, replies, pictures, etc
and puts it up on the internet.

When I get home later, I will try and dig that site up.

~~~
aaron695
I use to think it was funny messing with people from poor countries who
participated in activities that wasted our time for little $ benefit to
themselves but not so much any more.

Humiliating other humans beings for enjoyment isn't a great trait to
encourage.

These sites are also, whether that say they 'aren't' or not, are racist on
some level.

I'm sure there are some real a@#holes participating and running these scams
but often the people on the ground are just human beings who have no other way
to earn money.

~~~
eru
> I'm sure there are some real a@#holes participating and running these scams
> but often the people on the ground are just human beings who have no other
> way to earn money.

So the bot is probably a better idea than targeted humiliation. Making crime
quietly unprofitable is a good thing.

(You can help with Nigerian development, eg by giving to Doctors without
Borders or other approaches.)

~~~
digitalengineer
Wait, what? No thoer way to earn money? These are common thieves looking for
victims to rob them out of as much money as they can. People with skill, a PC,
access to the internet and good social skills.

~~~
jacquesm
That sounds like most telemarketeers to me.

Outbound call centers employ these people by the legions.

And selling crap stock to retirees is no better than pretending you're a
Nigerian prince.

------
hughw
As a point of interest: Nigerian scam letters predate the internet. In the
eighties and nineties, colleagues in the oil and gas industry, and I, received
frequent postal letters, postmarked Nigeria. One memorable one I received from
a high official in the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, requested I keep
his proposal a secret so "that my image may not be dented." We assumed they
combed the Oil and Gas Directory, or the Geophysical Directory, to obtain our
names. Perhaps these original, truly Nigerian scams, were less sophisticated
than the later Internet imitators, since targeting technical professionals
isn't targeting the dumbest of the dumb. Or, the rich veins they mined were
not yet depleted.

~~~
jakobsen
>these original, truly Nigerian scams, were less sophisticated than the later
Internet imitators, since targeting technical professionals isn't targeting
the dumbest of the dumb.

On the contrary, the scam you describe look much more elaborated than current
ones since they got your real peraonal info. Besides technical professionals
seem like a great target for scams, since they likely have more money than the
average and they are probably not as hard to scam as you might think, given
that even a harvard professor fell victim to a 419er
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/31/harvard_prof_scams/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/31/harvard_prof_scams/)

------
sehrope
Including typos in the spam messages falls in this same category. If seeing
typos in an "official communication" triggers your alarm bells then you
probably would not fall for whatever scamola it's a part of. It'd be in their
interests to get you to drop off early.

~~~
sdfghhasdf
Why is it in there best interest for you to drop off early?

You probably won't fall for it, but there is a still a chance...

~~~
dsrguru
Opportunity cost. If you can devote a few hours a day to each of, say, three
gullible marks, you have a much greater chance of a payout than devoting a
minute to each of 500 random marks.

~~~
Ygg2
Wait, what? These messages are sent en masse, and they aren't really hard to
write up.

~~~
estel
That's referring to the time that the scammer needs if the recipient falls for
their bait and initiates contact.

You only want the truly gullible to send that first email, or it would be a
waste of time for the scammer to talk to all the people who wouldn't wire
transfer their money a few days/weeks later.

~~~
dsrguru
Right, all contact after the first email has to be tailored to their
responses. Even gullible marks usually need hours or days (at minimum) of
building rapport before they're actually comfortable enough to be conned into
executing a transaction. If conning people into directly handing you cash were
automatable like phishing, you'd see a lot more con artists and a lot less of
other crimes.

------
justboxing
Interesting Study. There is also a related question addressed on Quora (circa
2010), on why these scams almost always originate from Nigeria and not else
where. The geo-political reasons are quite interesting too
[http://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-wire-fraud-scams-
origina...](http://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-wire-fraud-scams-originate-in-
Nigeria)

~~~
ejr
I don't have a Facebook page and I'd rather not use my Google account. Is
there a way for me to read that answer without creating one?

~~~
paraxisi
You can click away from the modal to close it.

~~~
ejr
That doesn't reveal any subsequent answers as I still got: "You must be signed
in to read this answer."

But the answers above solved that problem. Thanks.

------
cgio
I am writing an article about the "art" of business writing, where I use this
analysis to refute the usual consulting wisdom of making everything simple to
grasp, even if that means taking things out of context. My argument is that
sophisticated meaningful writing on difficult concepts acts as filter to
identify the readers (and potential business relationships) that will be more
willing to pursue visionary projects and supportive of different approaches.
In this domain, you do not need or want to address the whole market, just the
businesses that want to lead. Individuals who take the time to read and
understand or comment, emit signals of active and insightful engagement.

~~~
logicchains
Interestingly, I've seen the same argument applied as a refutation to the
traditional argument that dating site profiles should be kept short and
simple. Perhaps it's applicable to writing in general.

~~~
cgio
Definitely it applies to all kinds of writing, where a feedback loop is
desirable, in order to establish a communication channel. In this class, the
only thing specific to business writing, is that you try to establish a
communication channel with a view to building a business relationship.
Nevertheless, I believe there are types of writing where feedback is not
desirable. When I write poetry for example, I would rather not hear from
anyone who has read something I wrote.

------
MasterScrat
That abstract was the most convoluted way possible of saying: "because they
want dumb people".

~~~
holychiz
you're using ocam's razor a little too fine. The abstract actually said they
want the "dumbest" of "dumb" people. Since the Nigerian scams are so well-
known, only the truly gullibles will fall for their schemes, and those are the
ones the scammers want. Their reputations works as a victim filtering system
to their advantage.

------
robert_tweed
Reminds of of this later and somewhat funnier article about the "one weird
trick" ads:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_one_weird_trick_conquered_the_internet_what_happens_when_you_click_on.html)

They reached the same conclusion and in that case, I can believe it's correct
because those ads cost money, so must bring in more revenue, or they'd have
stopped a long time ago.

In the case of 419 scams, a large proportion of the scammers may not be that
sophisticated. It's entirely possible they really are just as dumb and
incapable of spelling as a naive layperson would assume. The fact that "scam
baiting" is a thing provides some evidence of that, although it's likely that
many of those reports are fake as well.

~~~
graeme
>In the case of 419 scams, a large proportion of the scammers may not be that
sophisticated. It's entirely possible they really are just as dumb and
incapable of spelling as a naive layperson would assume. The fact that "scam
baiting" is a thing provides some evidence of that, although it's likely that
many of those reports are fake as well.

Could be a case of evolutionary dynamics at play in the system. IF the typos
mattered, then dumb scammers would have been weeded out.

Conversely, if typos help, then this phenomenon may actually have encouraged
dumb scammers and weeded out literate ones that never thought to misspell.

~~~
bpodgursky
> Could be a case of evolutionary dynamics at play in the system. IF the typos
> mattered, then dumb scammers would have been weeded out.

OR, those who were able to produce high-quality grammatical English were able
to find better jobs than running 419 scams.

------
bosky101
To get a sense of how big a problem this is - americans reportedly had to
recover 2 Billion USD* as a result of nigerian scams in 2013 alone, followed
by China at $1750M, UK at $1210M and India at $870M.

What % of that was recovered is unknown.

Any team recovering even a small percentage of this makes it a fine
acquisition target for the biggest banks in the world for a solution that
works.

time saved in prevention of fraud; is time saved for banks not handling fraud,
angry customers or hiring lawyers or training staff.

Expect one team applying to YC, trying to tackle this problem.

[*] See page 33 of [http://www.ultrascan-
agi.com/public_html/html/pdf_files/Pre-...](http://www.ultrascan-
agi.com/public_html/html/pdf_files/Pre-
Release-419_Advance_Fee_Fraud_Statistics_2013-July-10-2014-NOT-FINAL-1.pdf)

------
vardhanw
How 2 of them were caught recently by a Mumbai citizen -
[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Mumbaikar-
bea...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Mumbaikar-beats-two-
African-conmen-at-their-own-game/articleshow/40862521.cms).

Given that non-productive responses (false positives) are harmful to the
scammers, one can think of spamming them with false positive responses as
well, right?

------
zzz1m
Is anyone else bothered by Figure 8, where the researcher assumes that
seraches of "Nigeria" would auto-produce "Nigeria Scam"....which is not always
the case, due to google personalizing seraches, (eg. if you search nigeria
scams for information, you will likely autoproduce that as an auto-complete)
"Figure 8: Google search offering “Nigerian Scam” as an auto-complete
suggestions for the string “Nigeria”. " As per caption

Ultimatly the figure isn't a big deal.....idk, maybe i'm wrong..

~~~
anthuswilliams
I believe tailoring search results was not as much of a factor in 2012 when
the article was written.

------
sopooneo
Could it then be the case that many of the them _aren 't_ really Nigerian? Has
an anti-brand been created that others use to their advantage?

------
notahacker
I can't help wondering what percentage of the victims of the vanilla "Nigerian
scam" over the internet are in developing countries nowadays where lawyers and
bankers generally do use free webmail accounts for their correspondence,
sending and receiving money via Western Union is quite normal, and requests
for funds to bribe an official barely raise an eyebrow.

~~~
the_af
Don't get too comfortable with that thought. At least a few years ago, plenty
of victims came from developed countries such as the US and the UK. My guess
is that it's caused by a combination of extreme gullibility and greed, and has
little to do with the development level of your country.

[http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/U-S-Internet-fraud-at-
al...](http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/U-S-Internet-fraud-at-all-time-
high-Nigerian-2576989.php)

------
brudgers
The previous discussion on HN [two years ago] for anyone interested:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4136016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4136016)

------
salvadormrf
To filter dumb people (their targets) from normal people.

------
oelmekki
That's why I always answer them as soon as I have some time. Lot of fun.

And now I realize, it's been a few months since I didn't get one of those
mails.

------
mlakkadshaw
This is also mentioned in the book "Think like a Freak" by by Steven D. Evitt
and Stephen J. Dubner

~~~
Kona_Company
Here's the link: [http://freakonomics.com/2014/04/04/bring-your-think-like-
a-f...](http://freakonomics.com/2014/04/04/bring-your-think-like-a-freak-
questions-for-levitt-and-dubner/). They also mentioned it recently in their
podcast.

------
dr_faustus
Say what you want about Microsoft but Microsoft Research is a pretty cool
outfit.

------
chrischen
Now that's what they call _product market fit._

------
anoother
Can we have a [2012] on the title, please?

~~~
dang
Done. Thanks!

