Since the first of the year, I have gotten at least 65 email messages
of the "Nigerian 419 scam" variety.  They have been tremendously varied,
with different names, different countries, different circumstances,
different amounts of money, etc.

This is indeed a rich harvest of criminal creativity, but some folks
have not been so lucky.  One blogger noted recently that he had finally
received his first one.  So, I'd like to share, and post these things
online, in open defiance of their demand for confidentiality.

HOWEVER, I don't want to mislead anyone in the slightest as to the nature
of these messages.  Naturally, the page header and footer of each one will
explain this, but I'd also like to have a background image of the word
FRAUD! repeated endlessly.  The background image should be light enough
(perhaps in light green?) so that it doesn't seriously interfere with the
readability of the documents.  Probably the word FRAUD should be on a
diagonal.

My scanner is connected to a machine which won't boot Windows 95, and
isn't likely to be fixed anytime soon.  Does anyone else have a way to
create a nice background image I can use?

16 responses total.

i do graphics and would gladly assist .. just not sure what it is exactly that
you need. email me if you like ..

Try Windows Paintbrush (or whatever it's called these days).  Dunno about the
diagonal text, though.  Horizontal text is easy enough.

Do you need another computer?  We were just given a collection of cases and
innards that we might be able to put together to run Win95 (or you can run
it on a 486, but these are pentiums).  May I forward you my Nigeria spam? 
I get a few every week but have not counted.  I post only the most creative
or the most stupid (such as the one informing you where to report it as spam).

By all means forward Nigerian (or other similar) scam spam to me.

I'll try the paint program and see what I can do.

Well, I don't normally do images either, but this is too easy for 
words.  I just popped up the paint program on the laptop I happen to be 
logged into (which I had never used before), type "FRAUD" in 120 point, 
Times Bold with the text color set to light green and rotated it 45 
degrees.  I made the image 1000 pixels wide, because I usually make 
background images very wide, but I probably didn't need to.

It's at http://www.unixpapa.com/x/fraud.jpg .

A sample of it used as a background image with some random text in the 
foreground is at http://www.unixpapa.com/x/fraud.html

You're welcome to capture the image and do what you want with it.  But 
frankly, this is not rocket science, and you can probably get something 
that better fits your conception by fiddling with a paint program for a 
bit.  I think it might look better if the text was a bit bigger and 
angled at less than 45 degrees.  Centering happens to work just fine on 
the window sizes I usually use, but your milage may vary.

I just forgot and deleted the most recent Nigeria-type spam.  I will send you
a few a week from now on.  The last one was also correctly spelled and they
seemed to think I would believe that a colleague had recommended me to them
to invest their petroleum profits.

Thanks to everyone for the graphic help.  I tried messing around with a
paint program and couldn't get it to work right.  I received an image from
Eric/other which I immediately used, but I'll take a look at Jan's version. 

Anyway, the web site is up, at http://potifos.com/fraud/

Send your Nigerian scam spam to me at polygon@potifos.com.

I sent a Gabon scam instead, which begged my kind indulgence and insisted that
I keep the whole matter highly confidential, and repeated that it was 100%
risk free and made statements to the effect that they had stolen 15 million
dollars but you could trust them completely.

Right, it doesn't have to be specifically Nigerian.  Zaire/Congo is also a
popular choice, as well as South Africa, Sierra Leone, Angola, and Ivory
Coast.  Zimbabwe, Togo, Liberia, and now Gabon have also been heard from.

What do you expect to accomplish with this site, Larry? Is it to just
publicize the fraud, or embarrass the perpetrators into abandoning it?
These messages are already the butt of some newpaper cartoons.  Are there
really still enough  suckers out there to fall for the scams?

Unfortunately, there are indeed enough suckers who fall for the scams.
I doubt the perpetrators will even notice the site, let alone be
embarrassed.

I  did  a Google search on <Nigeria fraud>, which foud about 130 sites, one
of which is your's Larry. Isn't  this overkill?

It floats his boat. ;-)

The Google hits aren't from searches on NIGERIA FRAUD; they're coming
from searches on the names of the specific individuals named in the
letters.  In at least some of those cases I looked at, my site is the only
hit on those names.

There is one other collection of scam emails which is somewhat larger.  I
have a link to it.

I just got a bunch of them, but deleted them all. There was some weird 
twist to this one.  You'll get the next one that appears in my inbox.

The government also has a site about the Nigeria scam, including information
on what happened to some people stupid enough to fall for it, who ended up
going to Nigeria and getting killed.

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