Penguin

I seem to get a lot of these. They often feature ERRATIC capitalisation OF WORDS randomly THROUGHout the Email, which will undoubtably explain the fact that a deceased relative left a large sum of money somewhere silly. These scams are known as advance fee fraud.

I wrote a random scam generator one day, so try it out:

http://gian.expdev.net/scam/

AddToMe: perhaps some of the more amusing examples of this phenomena could be included here?

-- GianPerrone


Mugu Baiting

This is an online game where you reply to the 419 scammer and carry on a conversation of Emails. The idea is to make humour at the expense of the scammer. Extra points for including names of Star Trek characters. If you want to play this game, remember these guys are criminals and alleged murderers -- be careful and keep your personal details out of it.

Scam o Rama shows the Email transcripts of the dumbest criminal on the planet who was tricked into giving $3 to the person he was trying to scam!

That was only the beginning, since the original $3 reverse-scam, assorted baiters have managed to score 500 naira (almost US$4), 5000 naira (about US$35), a 5g sample of gold worth almost US$100, and a crisp new US$100 bill which I think is the current record.

See also the inspired works of Brad Christensen and 419 eater.