Scamming the Scammers!

Who hasn't received an e-mail saying that a very distant relative of yours has recently died and left you his fortune. Of course, he resided in Africa before his unfortunate demise so the law is rather difficult and you're going to have to work around it if you want your millions. You need to help the "lawyer" who is contacting you in order to get your money. Usually this involves money transfers to cover processing expenses and the like. Or they'll send you a money transfer for more than what's yours and ask you to return the difference. Then the transfer turns out to be a fake and you've lost your money. Whatever happens, if you fall for the scam... you lose your money and get nothing in return. Sometimes these scams are very well thought out and very thorough, including false indentifcation, forged paper work and documents, and false correspondence between you and what is supposedly a reputable lawyer.

Well, a revolution has been started against these scammers. There are dozens of websites dedicated to putting these scammers out of business. Some of them do this through tracing the source and alerting proper governmental authorities of the attempte crime. Others employ a variety of tactics called scambaiting. Scambaiting is pretending that you are an unsuspecting individual who is falling for their scam. Many of these sites give you tips for how to really convince these people that they're going to get a big payout from you while at the same time forcing them to spend a lot of their own money to get that payout.

The website I found is called 419eater.com. They provide not only tips for scambaiting but also audio files of scammers trying to scam their victims, funny photos that scam baiters have extracted from scammers, a forum for sharing stories and tips, and an archive of scam letters. Dozens of these photos, scam letters, and audio files are hilarious.

Many of the contents of these websites are humorous but humor cannot hide the malicious intent behind these scammers. They have no ethics and no moral compass. Many of these scams do hail from Africa, in regions where guns rule and the law is more of a suggestion. In a land where anything goes, scamming innocent people is something these people don't even blink at. These scammers are criminals by any measure and should be treated as such. The websites that are working to shut down these criminals certainly deserve some recognition. Scammers are the modern quintessential bad guy. Their crime has gone beyond the typical physical assault and now they are targeting your finances. Unfortunately, while the US may have very strict laws regarding scammer punishment, such laws do not typically exist in the third world countries where these scammers are based.

The lesson to be learned here is: don't fall for scams. Educate yourself so that you can protect yourself from these criminals. If you have the time and the motivation also look into these websites that try to stop these scammers.