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Get Rich Quick

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by sleepless in wa

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How many of you folks are constantly getting 'stuff' from allegedly overseas (read non-US citizens) who have money to give away. Who starts these scams, and isn't there some legal means of nabbing these bothersome knuckleheads?

I mean at best they bother you, and at worst there gullible folks losing money to these crooks. Can't some web detective set up a sting? A few arrests and imprisonments would get around the net faster than the speed of electrons (well maybe only that fast).

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by guruofdos

Most of the web scams originate from within the US but I know the ones you are referring to. They usually allege to come from some government minister or other in Nigeria who has 'fiddled' some large sum of money and needs a foreign bank account to stash it in, in return for a cut of the pie.

As usual, the UK and Europe are light years ahead of the rest of the world and to date 39 arrests have been made and several ISP's fined six-digit sums concerning these get rich quick schemes. The majority of these scams are targeted at US recipients though, because the idea of 'making a fast buck' seems to appeal more to Americans as it is more part of the culture than it is in Europe.

by sleepless in wa

if the 'government' would provide a forwarding address for these things, some techie sleuth could sting some of these guys pretty easily I would think. the fines could pay their salary. they could be on commission. just the productivity in all email users not having to wade through this crap makes it worth doing. any ideas? who decides this stuff?

by sleepin'dawg

These things often originate in Nigeria but occasionally other sources crop up. I recently saw one from Madagascar. The main appeal is to your baser more avaricious inclinations but one should keep in mind that there is no such a thing as a free lunch. Efforts to recover money from these scams have put the lives of the people attempting these recoveries seriously at risk with at least one individual badly injured or wounded. Several African nations are notoriously corupt, running on the 'bakshish' principal, so attempts at recovery are doomed before they can start. Quite often the people running the scams are part of the government so you can rate your chances of success from that fact alone.

by sleepless in wa

Thanks for the insight. Too bad our troops are so busy in other parts of the world. Can't some techie figure out a way to bomb these guys with a bunker busting virus. Although I'm an old time IT guy, I went away for 6 years to teach. Any ideas on how to stop these things from coming to me?

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