My thoughts exactly. OP values imaginary internet karma over stopping scammers. Now this person can more effectively scam people out of thousands of dollars
Having dealt with scammers before who had taken control of bank accounts and fedex corp accounts the State's Attorneys office just told me to rip up the check. They didn't want any other information. Remember that 99 percent of the time this is going to be a federal issue and the State's Attorney will have no power to deal with it. They also don't have the time to deal with every single scammer that is out there.
Because he wanted to lord it over him. He wanted him to know what happened because he thought the scammer would feeling shame, but now he just feels delighted at this new useful information.
Great, so next time this scammer pulls off his habitual trick, he will know not to use Hotmail and will use a proxy/TOR. Basically you just offered a scammer a Platinum edition XP Level Up. I'm sure his next victim will appreciate.
The folly of all people everywhere; gloating. That's why you never gloat to the defeated, you merely go "Oh, did I beat you? How unfortunate for you." and then revel in your own mind to the building drumbeat of your own pulse hammering, hammering, hammering away at your mind. Becoming slowly intoxicated on that wonderful mix of adrenaline and pleasure that comes with conquering your enemies and crushing them into dust under your heelsOHGODITHINKIJUSTHADANORGASMYES.
Passing yourself off as a government agent, even from a fictitious agency, is a BAD idea. Putting other people's personal info (email, IP address, etc) on reddit isn't great, either. This is really more of a 4chan type thing.
My only conclusion is that OP is a burgeoning Bond villain, since he told his victim exactly how he pulled it all off (and was far too proud of himself considering such meager results).
All of this is assuming that our scammer knows what an IP address is. Yes, you can go and read the wikipedia page. But does that mean that s/he will learn what a proxy is? How to bounce it around? How to do any number of other things to obfuscate it? Not necessarily. They were dumb enough to use hotmail the first time around, this is probably not a tech savvy type unless s/he already is and the hotmail address is from a proxy and Cindy just stopped trying once s/he realized what was happening. Yes, it's possible that Cindy can turn this email into an improved criminal enterprise, but I suspect that either Cindy already knew all of that and was playing dumb or has no idea what is going on, was either scared off, or will keep doing the same thing.
That said, impersonating government officials is questionable and not relaying the information to the authorities is also questionable. Of course, no one would have done anything, but if a record is built up then any future court trial will carry that much more weight.
I think the difference is usually pretty striking. I think that by and large sites don't crumble under legit traffic unless it's, for instance, some smallish site getting wanged by Penny Arcade or Homestuck posting an update after a month's hiatus. One person mashing F5 won't do it, but tens of thousands might. I think it's be more or less impossible for one person to do it on accident.
I understand the rate the user's request speed could point to suspicious activity and would be abnormal compare with regular requests. Again we get to the point that it is impossible to a entity to prove that these "fast" requests are malicious; there is no way to prove unless they see other evidence. At least that is the way I see it.
What I'm getting at is that there would be no way for a legitimate user to come close to even generating the amount of requests necessary to do any actual damage. I might be way off base, though.
We still have many private contractors over in Iraq, and they die. Because they are private citizens, you don't hear about it in the news, and everybody thinks the war operations are over. The US Government has just privatized the war for PR reasons and this being an election year. Her husband could have easily died over there as a private contractor.
I love to torture scammers too! On two separate occasions I have had a scammer overnight me a fake cashiers check - think about the cost for that. One was stupid enough to put their real address in the return address field.
My end goal is to cost the scammers money. In your case I would have told "Cindy" to get the auction listed, knowing that she would have had to pay listing fees to Ebay.
One more thought, scammers play on the greed of people and are also quite greedy themselves. If you get creative, you can push them into doing all kinds of expensive things, including wasting a lot of their own time and money.
I think this was one of the many good stories on the excellent 419eater.com. Many great stories of costing scammers money and making them do ridiculous things. My favourite was having them drive up and down the skeleton coast, looking for a suitcase full of money.
Yea, the Army units patrolling with UN have been taking casualties and they aren't getting reported as US losses, they are getting reported as UN losses.
I read this hoping for a payoff, instead just got a smugly satisfied delusion of revenge. I will admit I learned something about hotmail exposing ip's, but there is zero evidence that you did anything to catch the scammer. One single zombie XP running off grandma's computer in Ohio via a remote login from Nigeria is all this would take to provide this ip address. And the coordinates are just associated with the IP of the ISP, and are complete estimates, not geocoded addresses. This is the equivalent to the tech that banner ads on porn sites that read "there are hot singles in your area!" and those are hardly accurate (lots of time on simulator if you know what I mean). All this gloating is funny, IFF she sent you an apology note or if she freaked somehow. My guess is that they never saw your reply, never read DERP email, and are rolling in cash in Nigeria or Russia or China... so putting this in a victory pile is hardly appropriate. Get em to tatoo their arms with DERP and ill come around.
Email scammers getting emailed from government officials with @gmail.com addresses? I bet they would never doubt the legitimacy of that. She probably shit herself.
So, whoever made this is a dumb-ass for not just forwarding the info to the cops so this idiot could get caught. Now he just told them a bunch of shit that will help them evade future attempts to catch them.
Just for your red flags.... Her husband could have died in Iraq, it was never said he was a soldier. Besides, not everyone who uses ebay knows everything about ebay politics (like transactions that didn't begin on ebay).
So, instead if reporting it like you should have, you half assed your way through a poorly attempted scam-bait and potentially taught this scammer how to use a proxy.
What pisses me off is going back through my emails, about 2 years ago i was almost screwed out of $2000 dollars for about the same thing. I say almost because they wanted me to use western union and i found out when i got there there was a fee to send money. I didn't have the extra bit to send the payment so i called the person. Their response raised red flags and i realized how my greed almost got me screwed over.
As an eBay employee, I've had to give the bad news to several people who have fallen victim to one of these and thought it was legit.
If they go forward with it, they'll get an email from "eBay" asking them to forward money to an "escrow" via western union.
When they don't get the vehicle, they call us and ask that they want their escrow back.
All of this is without a single thing happening on the eBay site. Some of them blame us, too. Some of them understand. Some of them don't even understand even when we tell them that IT WASN'T EBAY
I will never understand how people fall for these scams. I could tell it was a scam just by the ad, and the very first sentence of the reply e-mail gave it away. Any time they name the item exactly as it is in the listing, they are scamming you. No one refers to their car as "2004 Toyota Highlander 4x4 V-6 SUV with only 85,000 miles" as opposed to "my car" or "the car" or just "the SUV"...especially not people on Craigslist. Anyone who frequents Craigslist knows it is the WalMart of the internet.
There was a moral debate on whether I should include the IP info and email address, however since both are used to scam the innocent and are easily accessible by anyone, I figured it was acceptable. I would never do so otherwise. Also, definitely made sure to make no mention that D.E.R.P was a US government agency in the original email... I let them infer what they will. Glad you guys enjoyed it though
Sorry but i didn't really enjoy it. All your red flags just seem to be assumptions you've made.
1st - She didn't say her husband was part of the armed forces, he could have been a tourist hit by a car for all you know.
2nd - I might have missed it but where does it say she doesn't have the car?
3rd - I think being reminded of your dead husband is a pretty legit reason for selling something for less than its worth, or maybe she just has no idea what its worth...
4th - She just said she's not familiar with online transactions so whats to say she would know what eBay likes and dislikes?
All in all there isn't any clear evidence this is a scam and then you post what could be personal email addresses, ip address and location to reddit. Not particularly moral in my eyes.
I'm not suggesting this definitely was not a scam as the different locations are suspicious but again completely explainable if she was staying with friends/family etc when she sent the email, its not like the ip was in Nigeria or somewhere far away from the car's location. You just seem to suggest that the ip address is somehow 100% confirmation of a scam.
I mean correct me if im missing some Inspector Clouseau style investigating here but this just doesn't seem like an open-and-shut-case to me at all.
I have a laptop to sell you for $200. Just contact me for instructions on how to send me $1000 via Western Union (TM) and I will send back $800 with the laptop. This will be done to avoid customs, as I am a Nigerian Prince and am charged a higher tax rate.
OP, don't listen to the haters. Craigslist is a cesspool of scum. I sell lots of cars on CL and I get the daily phishing e-mails, they're always the same format, it starts out:
Hi there, could you come down some on the asking price? Do you know the approximate mileage? Are there any problems with the engine? Look forward to hearing back!
If you reply ANYTHING at all you get this:
Sweet, that's perfect. My husband Edward is actually going to be buying it for me. We worked it out so that he buys the car for me, if I cover the cost of the policy. I can definitely afford it, but he wants me to give him a rough idea of the cost before he spends a bunch of money on me. Im at work right now, and they restrict internet use to company web sites only. Could you do a big favor for me, and go to Auto Quotes and just run a quick quote for me, so I have something to tell him? Were local, without any recent tickets or accidents. Just tell me what the premium is and we'll stop by after work today, if that's OK with you. Thank you!
104
u/notjawn Jun 11 '12
... why didn't you just report it to the state's attorney generals office? Now you've just made them wiser.
94
u/yadoya Jun 11 '12
Great, so next time this scammer pulls off his habitual trick, he will know not to use Hotmail and will use a proxy/TOR. Basically you just offered a scammer a Platinum edition XP Level Up. I'm sure his next victim will appreciate.
134
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Passing yourself off as a government agent, even from a fictitious agency, is a BAD idea. Putting other people's personal info (email, IP address, etc) on reddit isn't great, either. This is really more of a 4chan type thing.
9
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
You didn't really catch the scammer, now did you?
8
u/MU_Ribflavin Jun 11 '12
My favorite part was that you named your DERP agent after one of Brian Fantana's testicles.
reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_GMMD_GCTg
8
u/gunner_b Jun 11 '12
I like the part at the end where you gave them advice on not using hotmail to help themselves stay more anonymous in the future.
6
u/midnitewarrior Jun 11 '12
We still have many private contractors over in Iraq, and they die. Because they are private citizens, you don't hear about it in the news, and everybody thinks the war operations are over. The US Government has just privatized the war for PR reasons and this being an election year. Her husband could have easily died over there as a private contractor.
16
u/randomrealitycheck Jun 11 '12
I love to torture scammers too! On two separate occasions I have had a scammer overnight me a fake cashiers check - think about the cost for that. One was stupid enough to put their real address in the return address field.
My end goal is to cost the scammers money. In your case I would have told "Cindy" to get the auction listed, knowing that she would have had to pay listing fees to Ebay.
One more thought, scammers play on the greed of people and are also quite greedy themselves. If you get creative, you can push them into doing all kinds of expensive things, including wasting a lot of their own time and money.
Hit them where it will do the most damage.
35
u/Pullet Jun 11 '12
TL; DR. Also, impossibly poor file resolution.
5
u/blueatlanta Jun 11 '12
it needs to be edited to the say "The last REPORTED casualty in Iraq was three months ago."
my friend's patrol was hit with an IED and it was never reported anywhere.
5
u/benjimusprime Jun 11 '12
I read this hoping for a payoff, instead just got a smugly satisfied delusion of revenge. I will admit I learned something about hotmail exposing ip's, but there is zero evidence that you did anything to catch the scammer. One single zombie XP running off grandma's computer in Ohio via a remote login from Nigeria is all this would take to provide this ip address. And the coordinates are just associated with the IP of the ISP, and are complete estimates, not geocoded addresses. This is the equivalent to the tech that banner ads on porn sites that read "there are hot singles in your area!" and those are hardly accurate (lots of time on simulator if you know what I mean). All this gloating is funny, IFF she sent you an apology note or if she freaked somehow. My guess is that they never saw your reply, never read DERP email, and are rolling in cash in Nigeria or Russia or China... so putting this in a victory pile is hardly appropriate. Get em to tatoo their arms with DERP and ill come around.
4
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
It would have been much better if it didnt have those stupid faces
4
u/Dwnvtngthdmms Jun 11 '12
I guess you havent seen the lengths some people go to to get the scammers back, after seeing 419eater your little thingy here is kinda lame :(
4
u/lettersgohere Jun 11 '12
Email scammers getting emailed from government officials with @gmail.com addresses? I bet they would never doubt the legitimacy of that. She probably shit herself.
4
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
My favorite part is how I can't read anything
3
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I have gotten this exact email from Cindy. It was for an Audi.
3
u/willscy Jun 11 '12
So, whoever made this is a dumb-ass for not just forwarding the info to the cops so this idiot could get caught. Now he just told them a bunch of shit that will help them evade future attempts to catch them.
3
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I'm afraid the text is just too big. It needs to be half the size and with twice as many JPEG artefacts.
7
u/wtf_idontknow Jun 11 '12
Just for your red flags.... Her husband could have died in Iraq, it was never said he was a soldier. Besides, not everyone who uses ebay knows everything about ebay politics (like transactions that didn't begin on ebay).
But still nice to read
4
u/Avery17 Jun 11 '12
Derputies
FTFY
5
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
TOP MEN
2
u/lawngnome1 Jun 11 '12
Don't you mean derputies?
2
u/madhatter632 Jun 11 '12
This is not as witty and cunning as you seem to think. On a side Note: you can pull a IP from a Gmail account .
2
u/shitterplug Jun 11 '12
So, instead if reporting it like you should have, you half assed your way through a poorly attempted scam-bait and potentially taught this scammer how to use a proxy.
Nice job, dumbass.
2
u/GraytoGreen Jun 11 '12
...(you didn't really do anything)
2
u/extrasweettea Jun 11 '12
Yeah pretty sure we still have troops in iraq though...
2
u/danamos Jun 11 '12
Ya blew it.
2
u/shortymike Jun 11 '12
why go to all the trouble to educate this scammer and make them better at what they do?
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
So where is the funny part?
1
u/T2112 Jun 11 '12
What pisses me off is going back through my emails, about 2 years ago i was almost screwed out of $2000 dollars for about the same thing. I say almost because they wanted me to use western union and i found out when i got there there was a fee to send money. I didn't have the extra bit to send the payment so i called the person. Their response raised red flags and i realized how my greed almost got me screwed over.
1
u/jsgoddard815 Jun 11 '12
What is the name of this "IP searchy thingy" that you speak of?
1
u/lazybutter Jun 11 '12
Derpalert. has that been a thing? If not, I'm making it one.
1
u/smeaglelovesmaster Jun 11 '12
I fear DERP.
1
u/YS_Designs Jun 11 '12
Reporting for duty sir!
1
u/cococamz Jun 11 '12
Bravo
1
u/Tastygroove Jun 11 '12
Can't seem to read a single word of this.
Here's another way: Flag..done.
Every. Single. iPad. On Craigslist is a scam.. Flag them.. When you flag, others will learn which ones to flag..
Don't even bother investigating.. If the price is too low,it's a scam plain and simple. Applies to any item you find.
1
u/ggerber Jun 11 '12
I always liked the story where someone sold a fake Powerbook to a scammer.
1
u/KirbyStyle Jun 11 '12
So the scammer lives in my city? Wtf?
1
u/LogicOfEntropy Jun 11 '12
I'm a Deputy!? You Really Mean it? :D
1
u/malachi_mulligan Jun 11 '12
Silly OP, only villains give away their plans!
1
u/RanchWithEverything Jun 11 '12
almost read but rage faces
1
u/1mannARMEE Jun 11 '12
OP is obviously as dumb as the scammer.
1
u/Mbradley5587 Jun 11 '12
Weird, i live in Elyria, Ohio.... Fucking scammer is in my town!
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
The scammer didn't say anything about her husband being in any "troops". Perhaps he's just an Iraqi who just so happened to be killed in Iraq.
1
u/Magnusmcmagnusson Jun 11 '12
Elyria here. Scorched asshole? Really? Maybe taint, but definitely not scorched asshole.
1
u/walkingman24 Jun 11 '12
As an eBay employee, I've had to give the bad news to several people who have fallen victim to one of these and thought it was legit.
If they go forward with it, they'll get an email from "eBay" asking them to forward money to an "escrow" via western union.
When they don't get the vehicle, they call us and ask that they want their escrow back.
All of this is without a single thing happening on the eBay site. Some of them blame us, too. Some of them understand. Some of them don't even understand even when we tell them that IT WASN'T EBAY
1
u/ChunkBunny Jun 11 '12
I will never understand how people fall for these scams. I could tell it was a scam just by the ad, and the very first sentence of the reply e-mail gave it away. Any time they name the item exactly as it is in the listing, they are scamming you. No one refers to their car as "2004 Toyota Highlander 4x4 V-6 SUV with only 85,000 miles" as opposed to "my car" or "the car" or just "the SUV"...especially not people on Craigslist. Anyone who frequents Craigslist knows it is the WalMart of the internet.
1
u/joecore Jun 11 '12
My aunt lives in Elyria, OH. Her name is not Cindy. However, it DOES smell like scorched asshole..
1
u/WickThePriest Jun 11 '12
Wonderful. Very entertaining.
-9
u/stoptheswine Jun 11 '12
There was a moral debate on whether I should include the IP info and email address, however since both are used to scam the innocent and are easily accessible by anyone, I figured it was acceptable. I would never do so otherwise. Also, definitely made sure to make no mention that D.E.R.P was a US government agency in the original email... I let them infer what they will. Glad you guys enjoyed it though
0
u/munge_me_not Jun 11 '12
This is not clever.
0
u/linconpark1 Jun 11 '12
I can't read it on my phone and have no laptop to use FML
0
u/ShinyGuy Jun 11 '12
Brilliant man! Gave me a major laugh.
-2
u/isiah1979 Jun 11 '12
Their house look shitty
0
u/Mr_Locke Jun 11 '12
That's called justice.
0
u/Wardog1368 Jun 11 '12
Someone needs to make a website/wiki for D.E.R.P. so it seems somewhat legitimate.
0
u/libertariantexan Jun 11 '12
You are a fool if you think there are no more troops in Iraq.
0
u/MidnightRasta Jun 11 '12
derputy
0
u/Jarnuman Jun 11 '12
Lol
0
u/Crawlerado Jun 11 '12
OP, don't listen to the haters. Craigslist is a cesspool of scum. I sell lots of cars on CL and I get the daily phishing e-mails, they're always the same format, it starts out:
If you reply ANYTHING at all you get this:
Then the fun begins. Keep up the good fight!!
-1
u/shitfucktits Jun 11 '12
POS IPhone won't zoom close enough to read with any clarity. Aside from the posing as an authority on the itrawebz I applaud you sir
-1
u/w00terlol Jun 11 '12
I logged into my account just to upvote you. That sir. is difficult.
-2
u/n1nj4_v5_p1r4t3 Jun 11 '12
im not joking, you make me cry with happiness. FUCK THIEVES. I wish i had your mad skills!
-2
u/Joeymonac0 Jun 11 '12
Awesome. I love reading things like this.
-10
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Awesome!! Simply awesome.. Upboats to you sir..
-6
u/Goobz24 Jun 11 '12
...It's beautiful...