Introduction

My father sometimes gets those letters from scam artists promising unreal inheritance from deceased relative. Sometimes he forwards those emails to me, since he's not sure if it's not real. Well, he doesn't speak English, he is not very knowledgeable about Internet use, so I see nothing wrong with him being puzzled by those e-mails mentioning his name and "millions of dollars" in the same sentence. Those are of course scams. The only purpose is to gather personal information and later sell it to people who will use it to their benefit. I usually reply to my father pointing out how exactly I know it's a scam, but one day I decided it's enough to waste my time only, I wanted to waste the time of whomever checks the e-mail address attached to such messages.

I decided to get a little scam baiting going, so I created a throwaway e-mail address and started correspondence exchange with the guy named William Inyama who previously spammed my father's e-mail with this message:

From: Williams Inyama
barwinyama@yahoo.co.uk

Dear D******ch,
I am Barr Williams Inyama,an Attorney at law,and the Personal lawyer to my late client late
Victor Davidovich, a foreigner who was a Shell Petroleum contractor.I am contacting you
to assist in repatriating his fund valued at US$18.5 Million into your account as his next of
kin.Waiting for your urgent reply.Barrister Williams Inyama ESQ.Tel:+228 094 2008

I had some fun exchanging e-mails with this guy, and I'm publishing the results for everyone to see. Enjoy the reading!

Throwing the bait

Naturally I've sent the e-mail from one of my accounts I usually use in a situation when I don't want to give my proper e-mail address for any reasons. This is how it goes:

To:barwinyama@yahoo.co.uk
When:29 April 2011 01:07:02


Hi I received your e-mail concerning death of my relative in which you ask to contact you as soon as possible. I'm very excited about getting so much money, but first I need to be sure it's not a scam, can you please provide your detailed information including your physical address.
Thanks!
-Pord
My bait is written in a way to give William opportunity to calm the concerned person down, the hooks are there for him to start making me sure he is not a scam artist, so he replies with quite detailed message which looks like a template with some additional details. Notice however that the level of English becomes quite inconsistent in his reply:

Re: Urgent reply.
Williams Inyama <barwinyama@yahoo.co.uk;
Кому:***@qip.ru
Когда:29 Апрель 2011 13:19:01


Dear Pord,
Thanks for your reply noted.

You are supposed to be excited because you have not come accross such money before and firstly I want to assure you that it is not a scam.

I really know that you are not the next of kin but since I have searched a long time now and could not get the relations,I decided to contact you,understanding that you can stand as the next of kin to receive this funds from the bank since you are sharing same surname with my late client.And the reasons why you have to stand as the next of kin to help matters is that the bank gave me a deathline till end of next month to produce the relatives or have the account declared unservicable thereby blocking the account and that means the bank seating on the funds hence my contact to you.I need your assistance so that upon transfering same to your account I will fly to meet you and we share the money for ourselves.40% to you and 50% for and we leave 10% ear-marked in case of any unforeseen expenses in the cause of the transfer to your account.And part of it will be donated to the ophanage.

Therefore,I request you to send me your datas such as your full name and addresses,telephone and fax numbers,your age and occupation .This information will help me to prepare an application which I will send to you and you forward it to the bank to enable the bank to start processing the transfer to your bank account.

My complete information is as follows:

Barrister Williams Inyama ESQ.
Diamond Chambers.
Age:52 years.
Office Address:32 Rue Aniko Palako.
Tel: +228 0942008 .
Fax; +228 2215799.
Lome Togo.
Home Address:No 12 Rue de Kamina
Koketime,Lome Togo.

I count on your cooperation.

Best regards,
Barr Williams Inyama.
At this point he already exposed himself as a scam artist since he responded to a random message which didn't specify my surname, but his reply refers to this surname as if it was known. He provides the address which I never bothered checking out, the following e-mails made it unnecessary. All he wants is my address and personal details he affectionately calls "datas"

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