Tired of Nigerian money hustle, inventive Net users wear down swindlers
Ethan Baron
Province
Scam artist “Patrick Chan” must have thought his dreams had come true when he received a gushing e-mail from a Surrey woman named Nissa.
Like most Internet scammers, Chan’s true identity and location are unknown. But his motivation was clear. And Nissa, like a growing number of web surfers around the world, is doing her best to make his dream and those of other fraudulent e-mail scammers a nightmare.
She’s declared war on Internet scammers such as Chan. Nissa’s goal, shared by others whose work is profiled on websites such as thescambaiter.com, and 419eater.com, is to tie up scammers’ time and resources so they’ll have less time to cheat people.
And Nissa, who did not want her last name revealed, has another motivation: “It’s fun.”
Chan’s initial contact with Nissa will sound familiar: Posing as executive director and chief financial officer of a major Hong Kong-based bank, he proposed a “business project” that would require her to spend no money other than the cost of setting up an overseas bank account.
Of course, she would need to send her personal information to Chan to facilitate a massive cash transfer.
The pitch is known by fraud watchers at Phonebusters.com as “Advanced Fee Letter Fraud,” and as the Nigerian letter scam.
It is one of several scams that show up routinely in Canadian e-mail boxes. Ontario-based Phonebusters.com, the Canadian anti-fraud phone centre, lists the main solicitations as those involving:
– Donations to false charities.
– Inheritance schemes where the target is promised a share of wealth.
– The prize pitch, where the targets are advised they’re lottery winners but need to send their private information or cash to collect.
– And phishing, where the scammers pose as genuine banks or other organizations and ask for personal information.
More menacing is the “hit man” e-mail, a relatively new scam that recently surfaced in Vernon in which a supposed hit man hired to assassinate the e-mail recipient writes he will only abort his mission in exchange for a large payoff.
E-scamming is serious business.
Fake lottery letters and e-mails snared at least 4,000 Canadians and suckered them out of $18 million last year, according to Phonebusters.
At least 4,633 Canadians had their identity stolen and were defrauded of $6.4 million online, by letter and phone. The Nigerian scam alone fooled 152 Canadians to the tune of $5.2 million.
Taken in that context, Chan’s grand plans don’t seem so laughably harmless. Nissa’s response was designed to turn the tables.
“I don’t want to miss this chance!!!” she wrote. “I am so glad you sent me an e-mail!”
She’s been “baiting” Chan for about three weeks, with requests for additional information.
“I think I can get a few months out of him,” she said.
British Columbians are still falling for e-mail scams, said Lynda Pasacreta, chairwoman of the Mainland B.C. Better Business Bureau.
Rather than baiting scammers, it’s best to ignore them, Pasacreta said.
“As long as people respond, or send money, or give them opportunities to create identity theft, they’ll just keep on,” she said.
Follow Nissa’s correspondence with Patrick Chan.
© The Vancouver Province 2008