[FUNNY] ReverseScam . com

There was an article about this guy in the Chronicle today.

Sept. 28, 2004, 6:22AM

Houston man cons Internet scam artists
Fake Texans' e-mails hooking the hoodwinkers
By ALLAN TURNER
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle


• ReverseScam.com
She was "Mrs. Miriam," the beleaguered widow of a top-level Nigerian official who turned to the Internet to solicit secret help in investing $50 million in the United States. He was "Dan the Car Man," a boisterous Houston mechanic with a heart of gold.


When she promised $10 million for chivalrous assistance, he offered to change her oil, deflate her tires, top off her fluids and dual out her double tranny manifold carburetor — all in 10 minutes or money back. When Miriam insisted her business proposal was intended only to help her molested children, Dan offered all of them jobs in his garage.

It could have been a business match made in cyber-heaven. It was, of course, nothing but a con artist getting out-conned.

Miriam was an obvious fraud — one of dozens of fictitious characters used by international criminals to separate gullible computer users from their cash. Dan was the brainchild of 27-year-old Houston Web designer Jeff Noble, out to strike a blow for cyber chumps everywhere with his satiric Web site, www.reversescam.com.

Battling Internet come-ons by firing back e-mails from a host of outrageous, stereotypical Texas characters — Beaumont Knitting Guild queen Gertrude Smith, raunchy goat rancher Billy Bob Jones and salt shaker mogul Robert Smith — Noble matches scammers lie for lie. While the humor is sometimes sophomoric and often politically incorrect, Noble usually comes out on top.

Posted on the site are dozens of exchanges between con artists and Noble's wily crew of misfits.

"I'd just say whatever popped into my head," Noble said. "I figured with each letter, I'd try to outdo myself. With each letter I'd say, 'There's not a chance they're going to respond to this. This has got to be the end.' But sure enough, I'd get a response."


Dan the Car Man
Writing as Dan the Car Man, Noble at one point offered Miriam a crash course in automobiles to prepare her for her coming employment at his shop.

"I like to start off with a standard bore '74 455 botto (never rebuilt!) that uses a triple flux capicator hydrocam (244/252@.050,.550/.554") along with a pair of old rollerblades and HO VS-12 soiled bedsprings," he began.

Another time, writing as Billy Bob Jones, Noble boasted to "Hameed Abdul" that "I'm the biggest and the baddest rancher west of the Mississippi, the 'mighty Mississip to us Texans.' ... I have money to invest, but, more important, I have thousands of gallons of goat milk to trade. ... I'm fixin' to head out, write back now, ya hear!"

Jones occasionally signed his e-mails with a Lone Star flourish — "Texas, Texas Yeeeeeeeehaw!"

When Hameed allowed that he had "gone through many difficulties and sufferness" (sic) after his father had been murdered in cold blood, Jones counseled: "You don't let this whoop ya boy, life is like a cow pasture. It's awful hard to get through it without stepping in some mess."


The 'Daddy' moniker
With the correspondence seemingly growing affectionate, Jones suggested Hameed call him "Daddy."

"The next e-mail came addressed to 'Dear, beloved father,' " Noble recalled. "So I figured I just can't take this any further. So Billy Bob wrote him suggesting that he change his name to 'Hank Jones.' His next letter was signed 'Hameed (Hank Jone).' He couldn't even get the name right. That's what's funny."

Letter scams generally begin with the sending of e-mails seeking assistance in investing or recovering large sums of money. Invariably, victims are requested to invest token sums of money in the hope of gaining a future fortune. While many such frauds originate in Africa, tracing their origins sometimes is difficult.

The Internet Fraud Complaint Center, jointly operated by the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, reports that in one recent year, more than 600 such attempted scams were reported. While only two victims lost money, one was bilked out of $30,000.

Noble began his Web site after a friend's effort to sell a car on the Internet generated a response from a potential buyer in Nigeria. The buyer offered a convoluted plan in which a third party would send a cashier's check, substantially in excess of the auto's cost, and Noble's friend would refund the difference.

When the check arrived, Noble's friend thought it seemed bogus — a fear that was quickly confirmed through his bank's investigation. No money was lost in the deal, Noble said, "but typically, a bank will accept such a check. Then two weeks later, when they find out it's bogus, they take the money back out of your account."

After his friend's close call, Noble asked other friends to forward apparent con artist e-mails. At first, Noble, whose casual conversation betrays no hint of an acerbic sense of humor, cranked out the e-mails for his own amusement. The site received 12,000 hits a month during its most popular point last year.

"That was cool," he said.

"My first character was Gertrude — a dotty old woman with a trust fund," Noble said. "My grandmother lives in Beaumont, but other than that, it's totally made up."


Big reward
After the geriatric quilter acknowledged that she and others at her retirement home might like to invest in a plan to surreptitiously transfer $25 million from Nigeria to the United States, "barrister Abbas Musa" offered her 20 percent of the sum by way of reward.

"I don't watch the markets anymore on the television ... " she responded. "My portfolio of stocks, bonds, gold and concentrated frozen orange juice is up one minute and down the next. This sounds like a solid investment, but I know from my retirement games of peaknuckle, (sic) ginrummy (sic) and spin the bottle that 20 percent seems kind of low. I would like 52.7 percent, that's the total of all my grandkids' ages in dog years.

"It's a pretty number."

allan.turner@chron.com


Chron Link

 

i read something like that a couple weeks ago, maybe on clutchfans i'm not sure funny stuff though