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What Happens When You Scam Back the E-Mail Scammers

by Terrence O'Brien on May 5, 2008 at 05:06 PM



We're sure you've seen them in your e-mail inbox before, those messages from someone in Africa offering you millions of dollars in questionably legal funds in exchange for your assistance and -- naturally -- a few thousand dollars of your own funds. They call them 419 scams, for the article in the Nigerian criminal code that covers this particular brand of fraud.

There is very little that one can do to find and stop these fraudsters, but what you can do is waste their time. This is called scam baiting, and it involves replying to the scammers without ever giving them what they want. The idea is the more time they're talking to you, the less time they're talking to other people who might fall for the scam. It's also kind of a hoot when you see the lengths to which some spammer scammers will go to maintain their fraudster identities.

The folks at Cracked, who often entertain us, have posted the e-mail exchanges between John Cheese of Juvenile Humor and one such scammer who called himself/herself Stella Tricia Colling. We won't ruin the surprises, but rest assured this e-huckster was quite confused and derailed after getting some "real" responses to his/her initial spam e-mail. [Source: Cracked]

Tags: 419, breaking news, BreakingNews, e-mail, e-mail scams, E-mailScams, funny, scams, security

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