Why do Nigerian scammers say they're from Nigeria? (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Why do Nigerian scammers say they're from Nigeria? (2012)

microsoft.com

22 pointsbehnamoh14 comments

I mean, there's a very practical reason for this. Back when the scam was popular, they asked you to send a Western Union transfer to Nigeria. I had a girl I was chatting with ask me to donate money to needy kids in Africa, which happened to be in Nigeria. Now they want iTunes gift cards so they can resell them. It's not game theory, it's just regular old money laundering.

Now they want iTunes gift cards so they can resell them.

Interestingly, when I bought an iTunes gift card at the Apple Store last week for a Christmas present, the Apple guy ringing me up required me to sign a document stating that I wasn't trying to pay someone with them. Some kind of scam prevention mechanism. I wonder how well it works.

They required you to sign a form that you wouldn't trade it for goods or services? Did you sign it? That part feels like the scam.

No, they asked me to sign a form (on an iPhone, FWIW) stating that I knew that strangers calling out of the blue and asking for payment in iTunes cards was a scam.

Doesn’t that violate the first sale doctrine?

How exactly? Apple doesn't prevent the sale, it just educates the purchaser who then acknowledges that they were warned.

The way OP worded it, it sounded like they (Apple) were saying, “you agree not to ‘give’ this card to someone who is a scammer”

Have a friend whose father was scammed out of thousands of dollars. The ploy was that an "attorney" from another state called to say how the college-aged grandson was in trouble and that the fastest way to make bail and retain said attorney was to purchase thousands of dollars in gift cards that are redeemable online and then read the redemption codes off. He ended up buying something like $15k in gift cards in one place and read them off, and sure enough the scammer hung up right after getting all the info.

It all sounds obviously fishy to you and I, but an intelligent but panicked elderly man concerned about his grandson's wellbeing fell for it. They don't need very many victims to make it worth their while.

The spelling is (believed to be) attrocious for similar reasons.

There is significant overlap between people that can't spell to save their lives and people who know very little about real world finances ("We need you to send us 10k for fees to unlock the 50 million").

Misspeling "atrocious" was a nice touch.

Let's just pretend that was intentional...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better

The article feels generated

I’ve always loved this rationale.

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