I Flew to Lagos and Got Beaten Up Because of a Nigerian Email Scam
vice.com
vice.com
About the same time (ten years ago) I went in for a job interview that turned out to be a hustle. They promised they were looking for programmers (really generic, like they didn't know what they were asking for).
When I showed up at the door I was sent into a conference room where a guy was giving a presentation on a new buy-in-application that was "guaranteed" to make money. Everything about the room made it uncomfortable to say no; there was one door with a guy standing in front of it smiling, they would hand out papers and not ask but pleasantly direct you to fill out your information.
I knew it was a scam, when I got up to leave in the middle of the presentation the guys running the show called me out; shaking their head in dismay and making comments as I left. Sort of a shaming ritual for me on my way out.
There were maybe thirty other people in the room, one guy left when I did but the rest stayed, out of that group I'm sure a few probably bought into it just because they were unemployed, down on their luck and willing to try anything.
So you pay a monthly fee for this application then you need to find customers to use it, then you get a percentage back of the customers who are using it. This would explain why they were looking for technical people.
So for $50 a month I'll give you drupal, then you sell it to clients, then I give you a percentage of each sale you make. There was something else about that that made it like a pyramid scheme though... like you had to get more people to sign up with them to try and sell it. I unfortunately don't remember all the details. Maybe I should have sat through the whole presentation! :)
I showed up and there was apparently a conference going on. The guy said, "I just thought this was the best way for you to see what we do." Fair enough, I grabbed my nametag, sat down, and started taking notes. I was pretty down on my luck and cash at the time, so I wasn't really in a place to be asking too many questions; I would literally take any client I could get.
The presentation was among the strangest things I've ever seen; a guy talking about how he got in at the ground floor and throwing $20 bills into the audience, showing pictures of his mansion and Lamborghini, full of lines like "fire your boss!" and implying that anyone who isn't rich has been duped and isn't as smart as those in the crowd obviously were.
I can't remember what the company was, but it was something about a lawyer on demand; you pay in $40/month, and anytime you need an attorney you have one - like insurance but with lawyers. To be able to sign up you had to pay $250, then you got x% of everyone that signed up under you, x/2% of anyone that signed up under them, and some sort of commission for getting your friends and family to pay the $40/month: The classic multi-level marketing garbage where 99% of the presentation is about making money and 1% is about the product.
There were people who had obviously been placed in the front row talking about how much money they had made, how they were here just a month ago and already had reached level X, and they would methodically nod their heads whenever the money-throwing guy talked.
It was really slimy, and by this point I was just ready to get out of there. The guy brought over an application and said, "Alright, so for you to be a content writer legally we need you to be a part of this program, so you put up the $250 up front and then I'll pay it back once we've gotten our project going." He refused to spot the "membership fee" up front for me, so I left, though he even stood in front of my car to try not to get me to leave.
I had almost forgotten about that.
Basically, she'd listed some furniture for sale. A guy contacted her with praise for the item and said he was a purchaser for a regional furniture reseller -- he finds nice used furniture for them and gets a cut of what they pay to the original owner (e.g. my mom). The two of them agreed on a price (including his commission), then he mailed her a check from "his company" and asked her to wire him his cut. At the point I found out about this (it came up in passing completely by accident), she'd deposited the check and was planning to wire the money the next day.
I told her it was a classic scam and to please not wire the money. She didn't believe me; she'd successfully sold furniture on craigslist before, the guy's e-mails sounded legit, and the bank seemed to have accepted the check just fine. I told her it takes a few days for the check to fail. She still thought it was fine, but for my sake, agreed to at least wait a few days.
Sure enough, the check bounced. My mom described how masterfully the scammer worked upon her feelings in the meantime, asking where the money was, sounding hurt and angry that she was withholding his "cut" on purpose and trying to cheat him, saying he'd trusted her with the check because she seemed nice. Even with my dire warnings, she felt bad about waiting for the check to clear, but luckily she did.
In the UK a cheque is never safe. The money could have been in your account for months, but if the bank discovers the cheque was forged they'll claw back the money.
Either way, this is kind of those whose validity seems like a coin toss. Might be true, might not be. I wouldn't be shocked, either way. Obviously the reach of spam schemes like this is frighteningly broad; you're bound to hit people who have the magic circumstances, though this one seems particularly extreme. I suppose it's illustrative, though. I approach a lot of neat stories I read on the internet that way.
Yes, she is a "normal."
The letters are deliberately implausible to weed out smart people so the scammers don't waste time on them:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&o...
Personally, I want to know where all these dumb people are getting their money, and can I please have some too :(
There's your problem right there. People like this are prone to other irrational thinking. I would bet that the vast majority of people who fall for this stuff are also deeply religious.
Stay classy, HN.
The stay classy thing is overused.
You're also generalizing all religions, when in fact there are some religions which actively warn against superstition and miracles (Buddhism, for example). So I can see why someone might think your comment was ill-informed (and I say that as an atheist).
What he did not actually say (though we can certainly infer) is that all religious thinking (or all deeply religious thinking) is necessarily irrational thinking.
If we merely grant that much deeply religious thinking is irrational, then I see nothing inherently wrong with suggesting that people who engage in one form of irrational reasoning might be susceptible to other forms.
Instead of commenting on religion, I will wager that people who claim to be superstitious tend to buy into horoscopes and homeopathy more often then the general population. That's not an offensive statement, is it? Yet what really is the difference between astrology and other things that we describe as religions?
You realize that's what superstitions are made of, right? Fancy science words don't make you rational.
I wasn't aware that "correlation" is a fancy science word, I guess it depends on your personal background.
Of course, some people only notice data that fit their preconceived perspective, and some people have received superstitions based entirely on the words of others. I'm sure there are other exceptions too. But in my mind, the conceptual framework for understanding irrational thought is that we have these brains that are amazing pattern matching machines and we don't know how to turn them off. Once we've noticed a pattern, most of us assume it's a real correlation, and no matter how many exceptions to the pattern we see, we don't know how to stop believing.
Superstitions are generally formed when two things are correlated, but the causative variable fails to be correctly isolated, resulting in the mistaken impression that one event causes another despite being either independent or actually dependent on a third variable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_and_dependence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_correlation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...
Then you've either not been paying close enough attention, or not reading the same discussion threads I have.
Also, I take a slight offense at that last part...
You can clasp your hands and ask your god to tell you how to confront your son about that magazine you found in his backpack, or you can brew some tea and look into the tea leaves for a message from the gods. These are fundamentally the same concept, except the tea leaves method is not blessed by Christians, and presumably the clasp hands method is not blessed by whoever reads tea leaves...
Prayer is functionally indistinguishable from divination.
Divination that is whitelisted by your flavor of Christianity is called "prayer". The sorts that are not whitelisted are called "divination" or "witchcraft." This can be seen clearly within Christianity when you consider the schism between some of the more extreme flavors of Protestantism and Catholicism. I have, on more than one occasion heard protestants describe various aspects of Catholicism as witchcraft and idolatry. Most of the accusations center around the issue of saints and the Virgin Mary, and whether it is acceptable to ask them to pray on your behalf. Many[all?] protestants do not consider this to be a blessed form of divination, thus the less mellow among them consider it to be witchcraft or whatever.
I think you taking it too literally. When religious person says "God blessed me with the gift of children", they rarely mean that the God - as an actual supernatural being - came to them in person and produced their children as a gift. Most probably, they know exactly where the children come from, and were actually present when those were conceived and born, and even though God might have been mentioned on both occasions, rarely they would claim The Almighty was personally present there and did the work. It is a metaphor expressing the idea of the Providence and God's control and responsibility about what happens to people. In the same way, when they say "I prayed and God let me see the solution of my problem", they rarely mean God personally came down to them in a burning bush, spoke to them and gave them detailed step-by-step instruction of how to solve their problems. Etc., etc.
>>> Prayer is functionally indistinguishable from divination.
Prayer is nothing like the divination. Prayer is an expression of certain feelings or formulae about the supernatural. Divination is a mechanistic procedure in which one would, after performing required ritual, receive information about the future or otherwise inaccessible information. Of course, you can pray for success of your divination, or you can try to divine if your prayer would be followed by some event, but those are two functionally very different actions. Note that for prayer, one usually is required to be a believer, while for divination you don't really have to believe in anything as long as you perform the ritual properly. This, btw, is a big different between modern religion and old religions - most of the old religions couldn't care less what you think as long as you do proper procedures. Modern ones rather concerned about morals and feelings and beliefs and all that immaterial stuff.
>>> I have, on more than one occasion heard protestants describe various aspects of Catholicism as witchcraft and idolatry.
I have heard the whole Christianity described as idolatry. So what? The question if Christianity is idolatry or not from the POV of anybody is not the question we were discussing.
>>> whether it is acceptable to ask them to pray on your behalf
I can imagine how it may be a problem for an ostensibly monotheistic religion, but that does not make a prayer a divination. Of course, that does not mean actual Christians never engage in practices which are, in fact, divination - but people violating the premises of their own religion is nothing new. I can give you Jews eating pork, Muslims drinking wine and Christians hating their fellow man. It happens. However, the religion as a belief system and as a social mechanism does not endorse it.
">>> I have, on more than one occasion heard protestants describe various aspects of Catholicism as witchcraft and idolatry. I have heard the whole Christianity described as idolatry. So what? The question if Christianity is idolatry or not from the POV of anybody is not the question we were discussing."
I was making a very specific point here. Christians accuse other christians of practicing witchcraft when they practice forms of prayer that they do not approve of.
Asking the Virgin Mary to pray on your behalf in Catholicism is whitelisted, therefore according to Catholics it is not witchcraft at all. According to tackless hardline protestants, it is not whitelisted, therefore they label it as what it really is, a form of divination.
Furthermore, your definition of divination is steeped in Christian bias. What you are really saying is "prayer is not divination because it is [magical woo] while divination is [magical woo what does not fit the Christian perspective towards relationships between gods and men]".
Whether or not you demand an immediate answer or need to be a "true believer" when you engage in the practice are both completely inconsequential. They are still both blatant magical thinking.
Er, its not divination in any case, and that isn't what hardline Protestants call it. The issue some Protestants have with intercessory prayer isn't that it is "divination" but that it is, as they see it, inconsistent with monotheism (incidentally, this is the same problem that, e.g., many Muslims have with Christian trinitarianism.)
> Furthermore, your definition of divination is steeped in Christian bias.
Its what the word means. Whether or not that fact is a result of a history of Christian bias is, really, beside the point; if you want a generalized term for superstition modern English has one; abusing a term with a different and clear definition for that purpose just obstructs communication.
>>> therefore they label it as what it really is, a form of divination.
Could you quote any reputable source that expresses it like that, that calling to Virgin Mary is not just wrong or prohibited for a protestant, but is actually a form of divination?
You argument seems to suggest that if some Christian faiths disagree on some specific account, then there can be no agreement between them on any account. This is of course false.
>>> Furthermore, your definition of divination is steeped in Christian bias
That's a funny accusation, given that I am not a Christian and never felt a desire to be one. I gave specific criteria on the difference. You did not show any flaw in my argument, you just labeled it "magical woo" and dismissed it.
>>> They are still both blatant magical thinking.
I'm not sure what you mean by "magical thinking" - does saying "magical woo" and expecting this to win an argument qualify? Divination and prayer are completely different practices, and while different religions could endorse both, dominant religions in relevant demographics endorse one and do not endorse the other. If you want to change your argument by conceding prayer is not divination and instead claiming prayer is "magical thinking" - be my guest, but then I'd recommend to actually learn what prayer means for people that actually pray and for religions that practice it. I'm pretty sure magic plays very little role there.
Prayer is not divination primarily in that receiving a 'voice form God' would by met with extreme suspicion and would not be shared. In Lutheran theology, we expect to find God's word written in the Bible.
Yeah, I get that you deny what you call divination. The point I am making here is that all the non-endorsed forms of magic get called what they are, while the endorsed forms of magic get endless circular arguments of "well you see this stuff is different..."
Not at all. For example, if God would like you to have free will then return communication would be rather scant.
For example - if God made himself obviously known then your will to love perhaps would not be as genuine.
Your premise that Gods would come forms that you expect isn't logical.
The only difference is that mainstream Christianity blesses one method, and derogatorily refers to the other methods as witchcraft or divination.
Different religions all have their own forms of blessed divination, and forbidden divination, and they all assert that their blessed methods are fundamentally different from the others, but it is all the same stuff.
You don't need the Ouija board for one of them, but you are just listing your personal whitelist criteria to me. Either one is still magical thinking.
>>> they only frown on those which aren't approved by the religion.
That's a vacuous statement - of course religions approve only things that they approve, and disapprove things that they disapprove. But among the things many religions - including Avraamic ones most common in Western world - disapprove, directly in their scripture and in many other sources - is divination, fortune telling and seeking omens.
My point about "aren't approved" is that many religions explicitly recommend divination, fortune telling, seeking omens, and the like, but only in a manner approved by that religion i.e. by doing so through their God, rather than through cards or animal bones or whatever. They do not universally discourage such behavior, though.
"The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive."
(Note: don't take my quoting of Sam Harris as an endorsement of him in general. I have no idea whether he's worth endorsing or not, having read essentially nothing of his beyond that quote.)
Looking at it from the outside, there's no serious difference.
Receiving direct messages from God is commonly called prophecy, and, depending on the religion, prophets are extinct since hundreds to thousands years. I don't think any mainstream religion claims to have prophets today - there are, of course, various freaks, but mainstream religious communities never make such claims.
So your description - unless, of course, you can back it up with some sources that contradict what I said - appears inadequate.
http://today.yougov.com/news/2013/10/25/god-told-me/
Prayer is absolutely "telepathic communication to God" in at least one direction. Prayer is something you can do in complete silence, and God is still supposed to be able to hear you. In any other context we would call that "telepathy".
The other direction is not quite as clear, but clearly a lot of people believe it. Beyond telepathic responses, there are physical replies to telepathic requests, for example:
http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/if-a-person-asks-in-p...
http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/why-werent-my-prayers...
Note that the answers are not "this is bad and you should definitely not do it", but rather a simple command to trust that God or the lesser beings will do what's best.
Which one would that be? If the prayer were God reading your mind, you didn't need to pray - God is omniscient, so He already knows what you're praying about. Moreover, He already knew what you would be praying about before you started. Why they are praying then, you ask? Try to answer this question (honestly, not jumping to the convenient conclusion of "all of them are idiots that couldn't see such a simple thing") and you'll get closer to understanding what prayer is. If they prayer would be you reading God's mind - I don't think any Avraamic religion would adopt such blasphemy as a human reading God's mind and understanding it.
>>> and God is still supposed to be able to hear you
You realize you just assumed God is a human which needs sounds to communicate, right?
>>> In any other context we would call that "telepathy".
Really? I just communicated with you in complete silence, yet it wasn't telepathy ;) Moreover, I simultaneously communicated with thousand other people, and didn't have to shout very hard either. Obviously, I'm some kind of wizard or something :)
I think you'd not get very far if you anthropomorphize God and imagine it's just some bearded dude sitting on a cloud. I, of course, far from prescribing a religion to you - if you want to believe this is how the God is, feel free to. I'm just saying it's probably not what most of the Christians believe in.
>>> a simple command to trust that God or the lesser beings will do what's best.
So where's a divination in that? Where is the fortune telling? I'd say if one of the fortune tellers would tell you "hope for the best and eventually something good would happen" you'd not pay much for that. That's why actual fortune tellers are much more verbose. I wouldn't vouch for the value of any of the verbs, but at least you get what you paid for.
The second answer, btw, explicitly says prayers are not magic - they are not supposed to force God (or any other supernatural being) into doing your bidding (that's basically what magic is about). It says it is a statement of trust, instead.
1. Most if not all Abrahamic religions hold that you can effectively pray in silence and without doing anything besides thinking your prayer.
2. Prayer is communicating with God and communicating by pure thought is telepathy.
3. God is expected to reply in some way, and you're encouraged to look for and interpret the reply.
Can you elaborate exactly which one(s) you have trouble with, and why?
2. Not really.
3. Not at all.
The idea that you can make God do things by thinking about some stuff sounds strange to me. However, nothing I know about Avraamic religions suggests you can do that. Of course, the scripture contains examples of people - called prophets or Holy Ones, etc. - communicating directly with God and even causing change is God's behavior (the latter is exceedingly rare, but you could find some examples) - but a normal regular person is not expected to do that.
If you go around looking for signs, you will find them. Who/what was it that sent him that sign?
As for the questions of greed, the Catholic church is not one of the poorest establishments on Earth, and has various episodes in its history which do not look very good to modern eye. However, such is the nature of men - it is natural to expect people to deviate from high morals and sometimes be greedy even if their religion rejects greed, and sometimes be hateful even if their religion opposes hate. That, however, does not make greed or hate religious institutions, and does not make them property of a particular religion.
"I'll pray on it" and "I'll talk to the Father" are really no different than what happened here.
Being able to implement mixed strategies is actually a game theoretic requirement for rationality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_%28game_theory%29#Pur...
I agree with your general premise, hardship probably does drive people to attempt the irrational, but I think gambling isn't necessarily a great example of this since there is likely more going on there.
What did this guy expect? I mean, it's one thing to fall for a scam like this under the pretense of helping a wronged/deposed Nigerian princess. But it's another to be told you're participating in a corrupt business deal and still go through with it.
My concern is less about the intelligence of the author. Rather, I'm concerned about the morality. Sure, people do bad things when they're in need. I just have little sympathy for someone who knowingly decides to participate in organized crime and then gets taken advantage of. You've made a decision to take advantage of someone else, and then you're going to complain when you get taken advantage of?
<facetious> He was, after all, playing chess on his PC when the scam e-mail arrived. Chess implies intelligence, right? </facetious>
I agree with you, except I think it's relevant to point out that is naivete in the extreme for anyone to be persuaded by a "Nigerian Prince" e-mail...even in 2003. Would he have been just as gullible had the scammers used postal mail?
Shows how much bigger and stranger the world is than one could have imagined.
Why is that? I would have thought that a corrupt official would be reaching out to his cronies, friends, cousins, etc. when he needed help with a scam.
Also note that the author said he was desperate for money, and had never received an email like that before. All of that combined with some slicktalking, and you can see how things like this are possible.
I don't think this kind of activity ends well for ordinary Joe.
Greed and easy money are powerful motivators though. There was (is ?) this Nigeria scam where Nigerians would buy electronic stuff from eBay at above market prices and sending fake PayPal emails to make the seller send his object.
I worked as a CSR at PayPal years ago and had to tell French people every day that PayPal had nothing to do with this and that they will never get money nor their device back.
I would feel bad for them sure, but in the meantime their desire to make too good money from some Nigerian was what prevented them to see the red flags.
When something is too good to be true I always try to remind myself that Santa isn't real.
My father used to get similar Nigerian scam correspondences back in the 70s/80s, in the postal mail.
In that vein:
http://xkcd.com/570/ (and do hover for the alt-text)
http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=bVEFCfjadN8C&pg=PT144&lpg...
As for the other commenters here, have you never done anything stupid in your life? Maybe not on this magnitude, but then all you're doing is trying to rank order yourself ahead of him on the gradient of stupidity. What value does that add?
Just an amazing community of people who troll scammers for fun and entertainment. I once spend a whole night reading through their tales of the trade.
He was selling a used car on Craigslist and had received interest from someone who was willing to buy it sight unseen but would also need it shipped as they weren't local (single biggest red flag on Craigslist). They were going to mail a check for the cost of the car and extra so that my dad could pay the delivery people that were to come pick the car up the following week.
By this point he had already also given them his phone number and home address so they would know where to pick it up.
They actually mail him the check for a couple grand which happened to belong to Mr. & Mrs. Smith of a neighboring small town. Mysterious buyer had indicated they were located no where near said town. Instead of cashing the check, he manages to save him self by giving the Smith's a call as their home phone was on the check.
Turns our the Smiths had lost their checkbook. I haven't heard the story in a while, I can't remember if they were already working with the police on another fraud check or if they were just recently alerted to their problem. Mysterious buyer/car delivery guy was about to make off with a grand or so and a car.
My dad gave everything he had on the buyer to the local police. I don't believe they were ever tracked down. Totally missed a good sting opportunity in my opinion.
After lots of back and forward, they sent an express UPS package full of $500 travelers checks in USD ($10k if I remember) to her apartment in NYC.
They wanted her to deposit them in her account, and immediately transfer 10% to them, and she could keep the rest.
We took them into the bank asking if they were real, after about an hour they finally told us no, and the only reason they had figured it out was because we asked, and their manager had just taken a course in detecting false travelers checks the month before. He said they were better than the fakes used on his course, and they passed all tests bar the very last and most time consuming one.
Likely a regular bank would have credited her account $10k, she would have transferred the 10%, and many months later the bank would come back asking for everything back. It would have worked, if I had not been visiting when the package arrived.
Update:
Found this article [1] stating that before 10/2012 the limit was 100,000 NGN, which at the end of 2002 traded at about 125 to the dollar [2]. That would put the withdrawal limit at about 800 dollars, but I'm not sure that's far off enough to call this article a fraud.
[1] http://businessnews.com.ng/2012/10/10/banks-raise-atm-daily-...
[2] http://www.likeforex.com/misc/historical-rates.php?f=USD&t=N...
In other words, I don't think the lesson is about the dangers of replying to emails - it's about the dangers of hooking up with gangsters when you're not a seasoned gangster yourself.
But being more serious, I really am sort of appalled at how gullible some people are. Honestly, some of these scenarios are the most shady and preposterous situations, yet they still believe it to be true?
Don't see why anyone would feel sorry for this guy. Would you feel bad for a robber that got caught?
"All right, if I win a game of hearts with less than 15 points, I’ll do it" -- please!
I used to love baiting the 419ers; I would redirect their inquiries to a throwaway hotmail account where I would draw them out with silly questions and comments. Usually it would not last much beyond 3-4 emails, though; they seem pretty good at sniffing out a baiter.
419eater.com is excellent, and there are or were a couple of other good collections out there, some really funny exchanges. In one, this (supposedly) dumb American flew to some town in Thailand instead of Nigeria, and the Nigerian got so mad he cursed and told him to go to hell. So much for that scam!
Sadly, I took down my scam baiting correspondence after I applied to a job with a Scottsdale networking company and their "security guy" did a google search that netted these exchanges. "You need to list these as relationships with foreign entities," he scolded. "Huh? It's just a joke, they might be in Florida for all I know." Nope. No sense of humor. They withdrew the job offer which was just as well; a very large bullet did I dodge that time!
More recently Nigerians, or similar folk, have been posting fake ads on Craigslist. A couple of years ago when we were looking for an apartment, I came across an unbelievably good deal, a huge luxury condo in Newton, Mass., for like $700 a month. It sounded just too good to be true; I contacted them and asked if it was a typo. They said in slightly less good English than in the ad that, no, it's not a typo, and they're going on some sort of mission to Africa for two years (uh oh, here it comes!) and needed a good reliable person to rent their home. Sniffing a scam, I decided to test them by mentioning that we had a pet howler monkey, but not to worry, he's very quiet and well behaved (howler monkeys are in fact considered the loudest land animals) and they didn't bat an eye, so I continued embellishing: he does sometimes fly into fits of rage and throw things, but for the most part he's pretty well house trained. When can we move in? But they stopped writing back.
People do get suckered, but usually it's because they are quite gullible, or lonely, or desperate, or some combination thereof. The character in the vice.com story had all of those qualities in abundance, making the story that much more believable, and he threw in quite a few details that seem factual enough, but overall things just didn't add up.
Superstitious to the nth degree, I can't stand this deeply flawed thinking, ie gamblers' logic. It makes me want to vomit.
E: And it doesn't matter what year, if you're going to let the outcome of a hearts game determine your actions, I have a oujia board to sell you.
E2: After going back and reading it again, this reads too closely to fiction to be real IMO.
Or perhaps you meant that Darwinian theory would conclude that this man is likely to purge himself from the genetic pool?
Could you elaborate on how a guy getting scammed proves this right? Maybe you can demonstrate that people with Nigerian ancestry are less likely to fall for this kind of scam (since their ancestors lived in an environment with selective pressure to avoid the scams)?