December 16, 2004

So today, I got an interesting piece of spam.

This one is a particularly rude variation of the Nigerian money fund-transfer scam, for it is specifically targeted at professional photographers. Read this (and try not to wince too much at the appalling english writing skills of the scammer):

Title: photo request

Hello,
Top of the day to you out there. I saw your listing at an online directory website. I wish to aquire some photographs which I intend using as a tutorial gadget in m! y fine art class towards Xmas. The areas of interests include history, war, sports, love, family, wildlife, nature, etc. Some wedding pictures too are welcome, can be used as samples. The head school is located in Florida but these photos will be needed in the school branch in Nigeria where I am just posted as head for the next 3 years ending.
Please advise the price and your name and address so that I can inform the Head-School management to send a check for the payment asap.They will be sending you our entitlement for the end-of-the-year activities; so you just deduct your amount and send the balance down here. We will be needing that for the Year Party and the Oliver Dewwit's Day coming up later this year as well.
That means that you will have to cash the check at a local cash point as soon as you receive it (to make it faster) and you send the excess through Western Union the same day. The time is short and we need to move very fast. Sorry for the rush and delay. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks and kind regards.
James Drumwell.

Frankly, this just insults my professional pride. Thinking that enough of my industry-brethren are stupid enough to actually fall for this, it alarming. I don't think that's an assumption either - why else would the scammers target photographers specifically?

What did I do about this scam, you may ask?

I did what every good internet citizen should do: I pulled a 419 on them. Yepp, I engaged the sucker into a conversation. Told him I'd be happy to provide pictures for his project - how many pictures did he need? And if speed was of concern, I'd send them out right after I've gotten the transfer from him in my paypal account. No problem.

Bastards. That'll teach 'em.

PS: The PPA (Professional Photographers of America) issued a press release about the tactic back in June too.

PPS: This guy struck back at the Nigerian scam artists with some real creativity and even has a little photo hall of scammer fame!

Beautiful.