Dutch Police Arrest A Bunch Of Internet Scammers

from the and-another-one-bites-the-dust dept

Every few months we hear a story like this one: police in Amsterdam have arrested 111 people, believed to be involved in internet fraud — specifically Nigerian “advanced fee” 419 scamming. Of course, it’s nice to see them bringing in a big group of folks, as it suggests they tried to track down the entire ring. However, these scams aren’t going away any time soon. After all, the 419 scam is really just a new take on an old, old scam that has gone on for ages — and there always seems to be new suckers out there. It’s really hard to believe that there are still folks out there who don’t recognize that some random stranger in Nigeria contacting you to give you millions of dollars isn’t a scam, but people still get sucked into such scams every day. Even worse, many refuse to believe that they were taken by a scam, even long after the scam is explained to them and they’ve lost tons of money. So until we can figure out a way to make people less gullible, these kinds of scams are going to continue. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth arresting those responsible, of course. It just means that we’d stop a lot more of these scams if more people actually understood that they were scams in the first place.


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Comments on “Dutch Police Arrest A Bunch Of Internet Scammers”

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12 Comments
jpee says:

spam the spammers

when i have nothing else to do, i reply to the spammers very innocently. i also have templates “dear sir, i am very happy to know that i wont the lottery”.. it would be funny to engage them in mail conversation.

every girl with computer in nigeria lost his parents in an road accident in california and every man with computer in nigeria is a bank officer and want to give you few million dollers, because no one is claiming that money!

people who have educated to use computer and email and if they dont understand this is not scam, i think they deserve it!

Overcast says:

There’s one simple rule to live by in the world of ‘Work at home’ and ‘Nigerian Rulers’ scams…

Put no money up first. Sure if you want to try to work at home, etc – go for it, just don’t send any cash first, let them deal with the initial ‘investment’ – whatever that may be, afterall – they are needing you, not vise-versa. Or at least – so they claim…

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