Suckers For Spam

It's amazing people still fall for email spam and phishing techniques. Here's an account of an unlucky record producer in CA that fell for the old Nigerian money transfer scam:

Hard as it is to believe for long-time Internet denizens, online scammers and spammers are still reaping rewards from the community at large.

Last week's bizarre tale of a Los Angeles record producer claiming he was being chased by Nigerian scam artists is a high-profile example of the pervasiveness of the activities still evident today.

According to a report by the L.A. Times Sunday, Christian Irwin was found after a five-day search initially prompted by the producer's disappearance and a frantic phone call he made to friends.

According to the report, friends and family said Irwin had become involved in an Internet scam that paid him to transfer money from Nigeria to the U.S.

He panicked when the scam artists demanded repayment of $50,000, the report continued, and phoned a friend to say he thought he was being chased by Nigerian scam artists. He was found Sunday alive in a stream near his house.

The Nigerian e-mail fraud scheme is one of the oldest tricks in the Internet scam book, earning its own advisory Web page on the U.S. Secret Service's site. Also called an advance fee fraud or 419 scheme, after the Nigerian penal code for fraud, the Secret Service believes the Nigerian e-mail scam has bilked hundreds of millions of dollars annually from users.

Here's how it works. Link to full story at EnterpriseITPlanet.com

Tags: anti spam, phishing