Are Nigerian scammers really that stupid?

Today Walt got an urgent e-mail from one "Kingsley Moghalu", whose e-mail address seems to belong to an Ellen Raez, but never mind. According to the "re" line, Kingsley wants me to "RESPOND VERY URGENTLY TO DEPUTY GOVERNOR CBN / OPEN THE ATTACHED AND READ‏". Walt didn't open the attachment, and neither should you, gentle reader. You know that, right?

Sometimes, though, you don't have to open an attachment. Right there in your in-box is a letter from a distraught widow, or a suffering orphan, or a conniving employee of a reputable international bank. (CBN = Central Bank of Nigeria, by the way. Yesterday I got one from the "Shanghai Bank Corporation", which must be the same as the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corp., of which I've heard.)

The letter -- one of many variations of "the Spanish prisoner letter", which is even older than Walt -- tells you the suffering orphan (or whoever) needs your help to access a fabulous sum of money which was (for instance) left to her by her late father (a trusted confidant of Moammar Gadhafi, or whoever) but which for some reason she needs to park in your bank account for awhile. For helping her, you will get a percentage of the fabulous sum.

Sounds too good to be true, right? And so it is. But you would be tipped off, wouldn't you, by the poor English, the dubious phone numbers (e.g. a cell phone for the office of the Bank of Scotland), and the obviously African names. How could anyone fall for this old con game? And why would the scammers be so stupid as to send out such obviously bogus e-mails? (They still come by snail-mail too, by the way.)

These questions have been puzzling Cormac Herley, one of Bill Gates's minions. In his paper "Why do Nigerian scammers say they are from Nigeria?", he argues that the scammers make their appeals so blatantly ludicrous to weed out smart people -- like Walt's readers -- who will not be so easily taken in. Anyone foolish enough to take these ludicrous letters at face value is thus the most promising mark for their scam. If they're stupid enough to believe this letter, they'll believe anything!

Another motive could be Nigeria's dreadful reputation for corruption. When a high official of the Central Bank of Nigeria tells you he's sitting on $30 million which was paid as a bribe to facilitate an illegal transaction, it seems quite plausible and you -- if you're greedy as well as stupid -- want to get the cut that is offered to you.

So... you and I know about the "419" and related scams, and won't be taken in. But 1000s of others aren't as smart as we are. Millions, perhaps billions of dollars are lost every year to these Nigerian (and non-Nigerian) fraudsters. Other than send the junk to your spam-box, is there something you can do? Eve Edelson says YES.

In Scamorama, a book based on her website of the same name, Ms Edelson suggests a little bit of public-spirited scam-baiting. That means playing the fraudsters' game, wasting their time and resources by pretending to be a potential victim. On the website and in the book, you'll find instructions on how to play along, and examples of hilarious correspondence between the would-be scammers and members of Eve's internet posse. It's a great site, worth having a look at even if you don't want to play.