NAC: Nigerian Scammers (& Tipronic Gearboxes)

[mboucher70 at hotmail.com]

As egroeg sirrah mentions, the awkward use of English usually gives them away.  Their writing is quite distinctive from others for whom English is a second language.   Since the official language of Nigeria is English (they were a British colony) they're schooled according to the remnants of this heritage.  Written English from Britian can sometimes seem slightly formal and awkward to Americans, and the English that they use in Nigeria would have drifted far from their colonial roots.  Combine that with the fact that the people writing those letters were probably not the A-students of Nigerian schools, and the result is an almost entertaining writing style when they try to pretend to be a bank official or whatever else.

There are two hillarious sites written by two individuals who decided to 'bait' the scammers.  
The first is British, with a typical Monty Python-esque sense of humor:
http://www.whatsthebloodypoint.com/
The second is American with a no-holds' barred attitude:
http://www.ebolamonkeyman.com/

Actually, I guess this post does have some Audi Content.  One of the best baiting done was when the baiter created a character called the Reverend Wally Tightnuts and his wife Mrs. Daphne Donkeykong.  Here is an exerpt letter from Wally:

Mrs Donkeykong has chosen the car she's getting. It's a rather nice Porsche Boxster
S in british racing green with the Tiptronic S gearbox.
I did tell her to get the manual gearbox as the Tipronic gearbox takes 4 mph of the
top speed of 164 mph but you know women, they just don't listen. 
and later:
Your call came at the right time. We were just planning to sell Mrs Donkeykong's
car. It is a rather nice Porsche Boxster S in British Racing Green with the
Tiptronic S gearbox. We bought it last month, thinking we were soon to get a share
in Leonard's funds.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "hayes myers" <hayesmyers at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 9:33 AM
To: "egroeg sirrah" <sirrah_egroeg at yahoo.ca>
Cc: "Audifans" <quattro at audifans.com>
Subject: Re: Should i buiy this or should you?? 2005 Audi A6 3.2 quattro - $4700 (Canada)

> Today i asked her for details on the ebay listing... uh oh..it has been
> cancelled:
> *Hi there,
> *
> *The eBay ad expired a few days ago i had it on a much higher price but no
> luck selling so i decided to go with Craigslist because its free posting on
> eBay is extremely expensive this days.
> Thanks*
> *Flora*
> 
> So i asked for the cragislist listing...and if she knew anyone with a good
> deal on a Porsche.
> 
> I'll not post more on this here... it was just interesting the lengths these
> guys will go to... i guess you can sell vapor to anyone!
> 
> Cheers !
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 6:10 PM, egroeg sirrah <sirrah_egroeg at yahoo.ca>wrote:
> 
>> Do we really have get beyond the awkward use of the English language. Has
>> Nigeria all over it  :-)
>>
>>
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