[78-L] Just curious.. ^

[Steve Thornton]

Experts on these scams estimate that at any given moment there is always at
least one person sitting in a London hotel lobby with a suitcase full of
cash waiting for their Nigerian scammer to show up. Some people --
reasonable, intelligent people with successful careers and families -- have
been lured all the way to Nigeria.

This scam is hundreds of years old; it's essentially the same as the
"Spanish Prisoner" scam that purported to have a line on Sir Francis Drake's
fortune. People suckered in by that one continued to believe that their
money was due and coming soon long after the scammer was imprisoned.

Today, it's popularly called "Nigerian" even though none of the participants
may be from Nigeria. As for the spam itself, you should realize that 99% of
the all email is spam. Any variations you notice in the amount of spam that
shows up in your inbox is due only to the endless cat-and-mouse game that
spammers and spam filter writers play. It bears no relation to the total
amount of spam, which is ever-increasing. You are getting many thousands of
spams a day that you never see. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com 
> [mailto:78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com] On Behalf Of Michael Biel
> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 12:01 PM
> To: 78-L Mail List
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Just curious.. ^
> 
> >>Don't they get tired of playing this game? Hasn't
> >> anybody ever noticed that it doesn't work?  dl 
> 
> From: Jeff Lichtman <jeff at swazoo.com>
> > Actually, it does work well enough for the scammers to make
> > money at it. It costs almost nothing to send an e-mail to
> > millions of people.  If only a few people take the bait,
> > they'll turn a profit. If they find someone suffering
> > from dementia they can make a lot. - Jeff Lichtman
> 
> Remember that they were doing this when it cost them money to send out
> snail mail letters prior to the development of email.  Back 
> in the 70s I
> sent a letter to Nigerian Radio for a verification and in addition to
> that I got several letters with nice stamps on them, neatly 
> individually
> typed, with the same type of scams being pulled today. It got to the
> point where the radio guidebooks mentioned that sending letters to
> Nigeria would result in these letters.  
> 
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com  
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 78-L mailing list
> 78-L at klickitat.78online.com
> http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l
>