Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

[Randy_G.]

Phishing is a term to describe an Internet scam where many fake requests are sent out in hopes that one or two people will respond and eventually fall prey to some sort of scam. Usually they involve money transfers or fake money orders and such. The entire purpose is to separate you from your money.

Recently I got a request from a suspected Phisher. They are trying to order some Livia 90 espresso machines from me. Not at all unusual in and of itself, other than the fact that I sell nothing on my website, and never have.  That, and they are now asking for four, medium size Pasquini Livia 90 espresso machines in white!

So this Phisher and I have been exchanging messages in an ongoing series of communications which I think you may find interesting.

It is Chapter 101 on my website.....  Keep an eye on this one!
 www.EspressoMyEspresso.com

[flynnaus]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

Not from Nigeria is he?

[Randy_G.]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

Its funny you should ask. It certainly occurred to me at first. The usual Nigerian scheme is the dead relative murdered in political upheaval and need to get money out of the country, will send a money order to you. Those people are not be be screwed with as they have resorted to murder in some cases.

The coffee phisherman I am playing is far less sophisticated as can be evidenced by the English language problem they seem to be dealing with... err... with which they seem to be dealing. They are using a yahoo mail address and it is semi-anon from what I can see as there are no IPs that are traceable in the header other than the ip address that shows the message being processed through my own isps mail server.

My only problem with all this is, if it plays out, where am I going to find 4, medium-sized, white Pasquini Livia 90s? :-)

[flynnaus]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

Its more likely to be from Asia. It may even be a legitimate request as he might want to use the machine as a template to manufacture their own copies.

[Randy_G.]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

I suppose "legitimate" is a relative thing. The company name given seems to not exist, even when searched for using various spellings, and even the name of the company is misspelled. The grammar does seem to indicate an Asian source for the messages, but it is still odd considering that I have no commercial presence on the internet at all for such a request to be made. And if they were really looking for a Pasquini Livia 90, why would they ask:

"[do]...you sell Pasquini Livia 90 Espresso Machine and if yes i will like you to mail me with the sizes that you do have ,"?

And then they responded that they wanted 4 mediums in white!

Any one factor could be written off, but i think we passed preponderance of evidence about 50 kms back.

Maybe I could offer them a free Pasquini Livia 90 with their purchase of Ayers Rock if they pay postage...

[Thundergod]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

They may realise Uluru (Ayers Rock) is not in California and not fall for your scam.

So is this phishing in reverse?
Why havent you asked them yet for a deposit?

[Dimal]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

Very funny Randy, and a bit of a side game to your usual occupation...

Mal.

[speleomike]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

Hi Randy

They still maybe legit but clueless buyers.... eventually you will find out as at some point they will ask for something that rings the alarm bells :-)

Anyway if your going to be a scam baiter good luck. Here are some links....
Links from 419eater.com, some classics here.
http://www.419eater.com/html/links.htm

419 scammers tricked into re-creating Dead Parrot Sketch
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/20/419-scammers-tricked.html

and the absolutely classic cardboard powerbook:
http://www.zug.com/pranks/powerbook/

and finally, I think all scam baiters should be wary, it in itself is fraud and some of these scams may be run by organisations with international links. You dont want to piss them off :-)

Mike

[Randy_G.]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

Hi Randy

They still maybe legit but clueless buyers.... eventually you will find out as at some point they will ask for something that rings the alarm bells :-)  .......

and finally, I think all scam baiters should be wary, it in itself is fraud and some of these scams may be run by organisations with international links. You dont want to piss them off :-)

Thanks for those links. The zug.com story of the P-P-P-Powerbook reverse scam was a real classic!

I would tend to believe they are legitimate if the business name existed somewhere in the world and came up in a search engine, or if it had been spelled correctly. They also typed out "Limited" in the business name, and it is almost always abbreviated in such communications (Ltd). Again, no one of these facts is a big deal, but all together it becomes a Saturday morning cartoon show.

I was introduced to baiting by a site that seems to be gone now..  www.bustedupcowgirl.com .  She went as far as to actually get many of them to send her the fake money orders costing them many thousands of dollars in mailing and counterfeiting costs. The Nigerians have murdered people who have crossed them, so I am aware of the dangers.

If you read my responses I was VERY careful not to actually offer actual proposal, exchange of funds,  nor offer to actually sell anything.  But your advice is sound and appreciated.

[speleomike]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

Hi all

Actually I have quite a soft spot for Nigerian financial email proposals. I have kept all that I have received for several years. I like them as they are in plain text format and generally not HTML mail, they are courteous and polite, and elicit such feelings of wishing to help the poor wives and family of deceased persons :-) My collection, which is just a single mail file, is 2.9 MBytes, contains several hundred solicitations.

The ABC show "Collectors" is always showing off peoples collections of thimbles, cards, glassware, Royal Doulton, Art Deco, etc - I wonder if they would be interested in my Nigerian collection ?

Anyhow Ill be reading Randys posts on the progress of these business discussions :-)

Mike

[Dimal]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

The ABC show "Collectors" is always showing off peoples collections of thimbles, cards, glassware, Royal Doulton, Art Deco, etc - I wonder if they would be interested in my Nigerian collection ?

Hmmm : Ethereal Collections..... Dont think theyve had one of those yet

Mal.

[Thundergod]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

At least the text file doesnt take up much room or collect dust.

[Sammus]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

I love that p-p-powerbook story. I wonder what happened to Jeff though?

[Koffee_Kosmo]

Re: Phishing for Coffee— hook, line and sinker.

Well I am happy to report that I have never got a Nigerian E-mail

KK