Ross Notes

Every few months, when I am in a certain mood, and an Advance Fee Fraud (aka Nigerian 419 scam) email crosses my inbox, I’ll ignore my first instinct to delete the message or send it to the Junk folder. Instead, I’ll answer it.

This is simply for fun, mind you. It’s a recently developed past time called “Scam Baiting“, and can be pretty fun. For the most part, my scam baiting attempts have been disappointing.

Then came David Brimley. Meet David (or, some guy David found a picture of):

I started the exchange off by asking for personal information. He obviously didn’t want to provide any (complaining “I should be the who surppose to be asking you all those kind of question because you are going to be the Beneficiary to the fund” while sending that photo.)

At several points I thought I was pushing my luck– I’m amazed that he continued to correspond with me after a smartass remark like “such a man of yachts and wine can only be a trustworthy business man!” and when I suggested we start talking in a secret code and take on code names (I’m Montel, he’s Donahue).

Really, after the first time he responded using code names and code words, I couldn’t think of a way to top that, so I decided to go Ninja and report him to all of the ISP’s and service providers that he abused for his scheme. (more on that in Part Two– Forensics). At the very least, the email address he used for most of our correspondence has definitely been taken down.

If you are interested, go read the whole exchange.