Reverse Scamming 419ers

[Bill Stewart]

Troll bait - yum!   But this discussion is already partly my fault,
so I guess I'll bite.

It's true that most of these scammers have chosen a
life of non-violent theft that's more moral than some of the things
they could have done for money, like being bandits,
or joining the armies of the corrupt dictators they're
pretending to be the kids of.   That's still no excuse,
and they're in no position to complain if they get ripped off.

Furthermore, some suckers occasionally lose enough money to them
that they come to Nigeria looking for it, or come to Nigeria
to get their big payoffs, and some of the scammers demonstrate
that their non-violence is not based on principle but on opportunity,
so the suckers either get kidnapped for ransom, killed, or both.

But let's look a bit farther into the victims of these scams.
- Ordinary people get their time wasted by the volume of this stuff.
         -- If scammers don't mind wasting our time,
         they're in no position to complain if some "sucker"
         wastes their time by asking for a photograph of them
         dancing around with a chicken or whatever,
         and while they're doing that, they're not wasting my time.
- ISPs get their money wasted carrying this stuff.
         -- Scammers are in no position to complain if they
         occasionally get sued, or if their cybercafes get sued
         or cut off from the net and go out of business.

- Greedy suckers who don't mind accepting a cut of the money
         from the classic "corrupt murderous dictator" or
         "corrupt construction company"'s take.
         There are some people who'd contend that taking these people's
         money is a _good_ thing, just like taking the scammers' money is,
         but certainly they deserve whatever happens to them.
         Their wives and kids may or may not deserve it,
         but the beauty of the classic 419 scam is that they're
         unable to go to the police because they're as guilty as the scammers.
         It's too bad that the only way for these suckers to lose big money
         is for the scammers to get it, because otherwise it's kind of fun.

- Gullible suckers who actually believe the less immoral versions
         of the scam: "You've won the lottery", "My church needs money",
         "I'm dying and have no heirs and want to give my money away".
         Ripping off these people is wrong, and in many cases it's
         elderly people's life savings that they've got no way to replace,
         and the lying scum who are trying to rip them off deserve
         anything that happens to them, especially if it takes them
         out of action before they succeed and gets them revealed to their
         friends, families, and business acquaintances as incompetent thieves.

         It's more likely to succeed than complaining to the Nigerian police,
         but if the police actually _did_ anything more severe than
         demanding a cut of the profits, it would be much worse for the 
scammers
         and their families than simply losing money and getting laughed
         out of the cybercafe and Western Union office.  One good reason for
         operating a 419 scam out of a Netherlands cybercafe is that
         nobody's trying to impose Islamic law and cut your hand off...

         Evolution in action is certainly a good start here.

- There's also a middle ground of suckers, e.g. the ones who aren't
         accepting money from anything obviously criminal,
         but who should know bloody well that they probably don't have
         an uncle Fred <suckers'-last-name-here> prospecting for oil in Nigeria
         for whom they're the next of kin, and that accepting the money
         rather than finding the "real" relatives who deserve it is dishonest,
         though it's ostensibly going to go to somebody who has just as
         little actual claim on the money, like the local government,
         so what the heck.  The scammers who try this one certainly
         deserve to get on other spammers' lists, lose a few bucks,
         and be encouraged to have embarrassing photos of themselves
         posted on the net.