Perhaps you have received an email that starts something like this...





"Greetings in Jesus' name, dear friend, I am the widow of Idi Amin."





Perhaps you receive several hundred of them on a regular basis. They are known as '419 Scams; , named after a section of the Nigerian penal code. In the email, someone will claim that they need your assistance in acquiring some large amount money that is held up in probate, etc. The catch is, they need some money from you in order to do it. Of course, your reward for helping will be substantially larger than your investment and well worth the effort.





According to the U.S. State Department, ;Thousands of American citizens fall for these scams each year, and some victims lose thousands of dollars in the process.'





Well, if you've been totally annoyed by them and wondered what could possibly be done about it, someone may finally have the answer.





There is a group known as scambaiter's that go after these guys. It's rather funny. Instead of deleting the email, they respond. In the case of the video below, they told the scammer's that they were film producers offering a cash grant or prize to budding new film artists. They convince the scammer to re-enact the famous Monty Python 'Dead Parrot' sketch. The idea is to humiliate the scammers by getting them to submit photo's, video's, etc., that the scambaiter's then post on their site. This one made it to YouTube.





The funny thing is, the scammer, according to Mike Berry, who was instrumental in getting them to make this video, are still waiting for their cash prize! In an interview on NPR, Mike said he currently had them believing that the man with the money is being held in a Spanish prison on pornography charges. They still don't know that they themselves have been scammed, even though this video has hit number one on YouTube.





For more info, check out the link.



WWW Link



Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch, scammer style!