turning the tables on 419'ers

This gave me a giggle...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3887493.stm

lol! That is pretty funny.

There's a whole bunch of these at http://www.scamorama.com/ -- and some of the scammers have been enticed to do other hilarious things.

Warning: Don't visit until you've got a lot of time to spend. There's a lot of these archived there and a great number of them are funny.

..Warning: Don't visit until you've got a lot of time to spend.


lol absolutely , great link.
I almost begin to feel sorry for some of the scammers but they are con-men after all I suppose.

but I sometimes wonder if the 419 scams are not actually a good way of removing money from the hands of those perhaps not bright enough to be allowed to have money in the first place, save them doing something even dafter with it :D

Great link...

but I sometimes wonder if the 419 scams are not actually a good way of removing money from the hands of those perhaps not bright enough to be allowed to have money in the first place
You're probably right. Best Belgian con as illustration:

2 men 'modify' a toolbox and simply make two sleeves + put a small machine in it that only picks a paper from a pile and pushes it through one of the sleeves.
They offered it for sale to some rich bloke (barrister or so), claiming that it was a money-making-machine : you inserted a blank note through sleeve 1, and a 50 euro bill came out of the other sleeve.
Because this sounds very unlikely, they gave the potential buyer a few days to try it out. So they left the 'machine' with a stack of 'special blank papers' there. (Of coarse, the machine contained more euro-bills then they left blank papers).
As incredible as it may sound: the barrister bought the 'machine', using money from his clients ... Because he couldn't return the money to his clients, everything came out and the story made the national papers.
, save them doing something even dafter with it :DWount be easy in this case though.

but I sometimes wonder if the 419 scams are not actually a good way of removing money from the hands of those perhaps not bright enough to be allowed to have money in the first place, save them doing something even dafter with it

OTOH, we all have that relative or two who is a very nice person generally even though they aren't all that bright and it's those people who are the big losers in any scam. While you try to watch out for people taking advantage of them there's always more scammers out there preparing another pitch which while it may seem obvious to you or I it's got just enough in it that the more gullible will want to follow up.

A thief is still a thief and has no right to any ill gotten gains.