

Scamming the scammer - vijayr
http://www.419eater.com/html/okorie.htm

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martin
For any This American Life fans here, there's a great episode about these
guys:
[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=3...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=363)

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

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amvp
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.

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Bjoern
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.

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jacquesm
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...

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dan_the_welder
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.

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DTrejo
_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.

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nradov
How the hell would you know Okorie's motives?

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vijayr
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.

