Edited by author 10-29-2002 01:18 PM
I've known about this scam since it was perpetrated by paper mail. A co-worker got an air-mail letter from Nigeria in 1989 or thereabout. It's really hard to imagine anyone *not* knowing about it these days. But just yesterday, The Oregonian ran a story on 419s. Lots of horror stories about people mortgaging houses, or rural towns using their community chest for the advance fee.

You know what would end this? If all the big cop-drama shows and soap operas committed to do an episode on the scams. Or if Judge Judy got medieval on a scammer's ass. Of course, they'd have to fly him in from Lagos . . .

I didn't know how successful advance fee scams were. One of the most notorious was one purporting to come from a Gulf War veteran with millions in drug money he wanted to recover/smuggle from Iraq. Plenty of people wanted to help him out.... it is a pretty revealing take on human nature.

I guess I just lead a boring life, but I find those Nigerian scam e-mails endlessly entertaining. I like to answer them and see how long I can keep the correspondence going - asking stupid questions and making them repeat themselves as many times as I can before they get finally get so frustrated and upset with me they stop replying. Incidentally, I'm an American and I'm certain I could find Nigeria on a map - however, since I'm not interested in buying any tin or palm oil and don't enjoy being held hostage by assclown swindlers, I doubt I'll need to :)

It is especially beautiful to see dumb ass Americans scammed from a country which they couldn't locate on a map.

That's pretty much any country on the planet, including America.

This is wonderful, in all of the sick and twisted ways that the modern economy makes possible.

It is especially beautiful to see dumb ass Americans scammed from a country which they couldn't locate on a map.

Ugh. If this is the killer app for the Net in Nigeria, shut the places down.