Jen's Blog

Nigerian Scams and Buying a Car

I've decided to buy a car, and have been trying to negotiate with a dealer via email for the past week (not very successfully, but I'm still hopeful.) Although not really pertinent to this entry, I plan to buy a 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid.

Also this week I discovered a really neat website, called Scam-o-Rama. It is devoted to Nigerian scam emails, of which there are many variations. If you have an email account, you've probably gotten at least one of these. They go along the lines of some guy has a heap of money in his country, usually Nigeria, and needs your help to get it out. In return, he'll give you a cut of the cash. The catch? You have to send him a "small" sum of money to assist in the transfer (for fees, bribes, whatever.) You send him the money, usually in the tens of thousands, and never hear from him again. Or if you do, it's to request additional money, because the first amount wasn't enough. People have been bilked out of thousands of dollars this way, and almost never recover it. There are lots of variations, some involve oil or gold, or helping an orphan recover her inheritance. They're all scams, and they probably work well enough for them to continue. I read warnings about them nearly 10 years ago when I listened to shortwave radio (except then it was real letters, not email, so at least you might get some nice stamps) and I know they weren't new then.

So, back to the website. A number of people have decided that it would be more fun to play along with the scammers (or Lads, as they are called on Scamorama.) They have hundreds of email exchanges from people playing along as some character (e.g. Mr. T, Bart Simpson, some super rich tycoon, etc.), leading the Lad on for weeks, and then at the last minute explaining that no, he's not going to get millions of dollars because they don't exist, the gold mine doesn't exist, and the Lad is really too stupid to be a criminal, he should look for a regular job instead.

After reading a few dozen of these, I actually started to feel a little sorry for the scammers. Then I would remind myself that these are guys hoping to steal thousands of dollars from someone, they're criminals who don't deserve pity. Some of the authors (the scamees, not the Lads) are incredibly creative and come up with what must be very convincing stories. Are the Lads really so naive that they think a young rich girl is going to send them thousands of dollars, fly to Nigeria, and marry a guy sight unseens? Well, you wouldn't think so, but then I wouldn't have thought that anyone on the other side would buy the scammer's stories, either. But unfortunately there are several stories of people who have spent lots of money, either because of greed (of getting millions from doing pretty much nothing) or pity (helping a poor orphan kid recover her riches.)

What does this have to do with buying a car? Not much, except both involve negotiating with someone via email. After reading so many of the email exchanges, my own email exchanges with the car dealer started to seem weird and scam-like. The fact that I haven't heard from him since Monday (despite 2 emails to him) makes it worse...maybe he thinks I'm scamming him!

Stay tuned....

Posted by Jen at October 25, 2003 08:54 AM