Spam messages are offering more money

In the beginning I received spam messages promising me 100,000 dollar. But not anymore! Now i'm being promised 18,000,000 dollars! Talk about inflation

FROM THE DESK OF MR.HAMED MAIGA.
BILL AND EXHANGE UNIT BANK OF AFRICA (BOA) OUAGADOUGOU-BURKINA FASO.

URGENT ASSISTANCE IN TRANSACTION

I am the manager of the bill and exchange department of BANK OF AFRICA (BOA) here in Ouagadougou the capital city of Burkina Faso. In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of US$18.2M(EIGHTEEN MILLION TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS) in an account that belong to one of our foreign customer who died along with his entire family in a plane crashed near Paris (FRANCE) on the 25th of July 2000.

Please visit this site that is one of the evidence the directors brought in other to swallow the money at the end of the day,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/859479.stm

Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because the bank cannot release it unless some body applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as it was indicated in our banking guideline and laws but unfortunately we learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him at the plane crashed leaving nobody behind for the claim.

It is therefore upon this discovery that I now decided to make this business proposal to you so that you can stand as the beneficiary to the deceased customer and to enable the bank to release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased customer for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don't want this money to go into the bank treasury as unclaimed bill because the banking law and guideline here stipulates that if such money remained unclaimed after nine years the money will be transferred into the bank treasury as unclaimed fund.

The request of foreigner as next of kin in this business is occasioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner and a Burkinabe cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner, and I agree that 45% of this money will be for you as a respect to the provision of a foreign account, 5% will be set aside for expenses incurred during the business and 50% would be for me, thereafter, I will visit Your country for disbursement according to the percentage indicated.

Therefore, to enable the immediate transfer of this fund to your designated bank account, you must apply first to the bank as a relation or next of kin of the deceased with a text of application that I will send to you, so I will like you to send to me your private telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication between each other and also about the location where the money will be remitted.

Upon receipt of your reply, I will send to you by fax or email the text of the application that you will use in claiming the money as the beneficiary to the deceased customer. I will not fail to bring to your notice this transaction is hitch-free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required arrangements have been made for the transfer. Thanks.
You should contact me immediately.

Trusting to hear from you immediately.
Truly Yours,
MR.HAMED MAIGA (BOA)

What is Scam Baiting

Scam baiting is the practice of pretending interest in a fraudulent scheme in order to manipulate a scammer. The purpose of scam baiting might be to waste the scammers' time, embarrass him or her, cause him or her to reveal information which can be passed on to legal authorities, get him or her to waste money, or, in the great majority of cases, simply to amuse the baiter.

The primary goal of scambaiting is stopping 419 Advance fee fraud, which bilks hundreds of millions of dollars from victims, and can lead to victims committing crimes to raise enough money to feed the fraudulent schemes.

Scam baiters often simply attempt to waste the scammer's time by pretending to be a victim; they often believe if a scammer is busy communicating with a baiter, then less time is left for finding and corresponding with potential victims. In "Conversations with a Nigerian Bank Scammer", writer Karl Mamer documents verbose "conversations" over email with several Nigerian 419 scammers. After statements like "Marco, my good and soon to be prosperous friend, you have correctly intimated from my writings on religion and Elvis that indeed, like you, I whole heartily [sic] agree that the separation of church and state is both unnatural and ungodly", "Marco" finally says "I am so scared to meet you with this amount of talking".

Another common practice amongst scambaiters is to ask the scammer to do something in order to prove their identity or their intentions, such as send a photograph of himself or herself in a compromising position. Baiting forums relish in a special bait they term "safari" in which they attempt to persuade scammers into traveling long distances to meet phantom victims or to pick up bogus wire transfers.

A small number of scam baiters claim to have convinced their scammers to send money to them, although the actual occurrence of this is disputed. Tom Craig, a former Scotland Yard officer, says that it would be unprecedented for 419 con artists to part with money and suggests that scam baiters could easily forge the scanty "evidence" of such successes. Other baiters have succeeded in getting their scammers to send them art or other "trophies" as evidence of completed work for the baiter, which is, of course, never paid.

In a paper titled "Scamming the Scammers - Vigilante Justice in Virtual Communities", Lauri Tuovinen and Juha Röning of the University of Oulu, Finland address the ethical issues of Patrick Cain's "Internet's First Blood Sport". They also use the term "digilantism" to describe the subculture of scam baiting and vigilante justice on the Internet.

Source: wikipedia