I Can Has "£12,000,000.00 Pounds Sterling"?
The numeric part of the spam was redundant with both the pound sign and the words "pounds sterling". There were dozens of other clear indications that the message wasn't legitimate, but I thought I'd play along so I became Zacharias (Zeke) Nugudnik Yeshallfind (yes, that really is "Zeke N. Yeshallfind"), a fellow with a rather complicated history. I wondered what I could find out about the creeps who were trying to con me.
Here's Who I Am
I am Zacharias (Zeke) Nugudnik Yeshallfind and
I live at 64 West 120th Street, in Harlem, New York City 10027 (USPS shows as "non-deliverable"); I have been at this address, which is just around the corner from the lovely, quiet Marcus Garvey Park since 1965.
I do not own either a telephone or a fax because I find them bothersome and noisy intrusions. I do have a fine computer, though, and a fast Internet connection. I find that this is all I need when it comes to communicating.
I retired in 1991 after making a great deal of money as a stock broker on Wall Street, a few years after a certain rather unfortunate misunderstanding with the brokerage firm I worked for in 1984.
My father died in 1989 and setup a blind trust that controls all the money left to me ($27,500,255) and any money I make on my own ($43,221,407, plus a "windfall" profit in 1984) so I cannot have a bank account that I have access to. Instead, the executors of daddy's will pay for all of my day-to-day expenses.
I was born in Londerzeel, Belgium, or so my parents told me, on August 4, 1939. Londerzeel is about 23km (15mi) from Brussels.
My parents left Belgium with me rather abruptly, it seems, and lived for a while in Cuba (1940-1942), then moved to Chicago in 1942 (I was 3) and eventually became citizens. In 1945 (I was 6), they moved to New York City and I grew up on the Lower East Side. We lived on the top floor of a 6-floor walk-up at Avenue B and 4th Street. The building is still there.
I'm 69 years old and I think that the message at the bottom of each message from the scammers "La bandeja de entrada más inteligente," must be a blessing. It is Yahoo Spain's commercial message "The smarter inbox," but I include it in every message to the scammers.
Email: Zeke.N.Yeshallfind@prestupnik.info
The First Step
I found a spam in my spam trapper. This is clearly the beginning of one of those Nigerian 419 con jobs. I decided to clear the message for delivery to my inbox.
But who should I be? I finally decided to be Zeke N. Yeshallfind and I created a special mailbox for that character and replied to "Mrs Kingston".
Well, of course "Mrs Kingston" was just delighted that I would be willing to take the money from her dead husband off her hands and she directed me to contact her "barrister". (Will these idiots never learn that barristers don't do work like this? They're the high-priced spread that represent you in court. But I played along.
In fact, I pretended to think that "Barrister" was some sort of high-class name and asked if I could call him "Barry".
"Barry" didn't seem to mind the name and he sent me instructions regarding how to start the process of obtaining my "£12,000,000.00 Pounds Sterling". He asked for information about me.
So I started spinning my story. Details about me and my life are in the sidebar above. So far, "Barry" is appearing to buy everything I've said.
The fake "barrister" replied to my message, but he managed to misspell my last name I couldn't let that pass! Was this part of the con—checking to see if I was really Zeke N. Yeshallfind?
I don't know, but I had to reply and let him know that he had my name wrong.
Poor "Barry" told me that he would fix things.
And then it was time to send me the "step 1" message that makes the process look easy. I should have my "£12,000,000.00 Pounds Sterling" in just a few days. Looks like clear sailing from here, doesn't it?
So I quickly replied to Dr Smith (at the "bank") to start the process of opening the account that will be used to deposit the money.
Oh—by the way—only an idiot would fail to recognize the document provided by "Dr Smith" as anything other than a fake. Can you imagine any bank using Comic Sans for its name and providing a document that's this poorly formatted?
No matter. I filled it out and returned it.
And then "Dr Robert Smith" set the hook. According to British law, I would need to deposit nearly $1300 just to open an account. And the best way to do that would be to use either Western Union or Moneygram to send the payment.
Uh, oh dear, Dr Robert Smith, I think there's a problem here. I can't gain access to the money my daddy left me when he died in 1989, but I wonder if you or your bank would advance me the money. I would even be willing to pay you £1,000,000.00, which would still leave me £11,000,000.00 and would give Dr Smith a nice profit for his time.
Pretty reasonable, don't you think?
The Crooks Didn't Think So
I kept trying to come up with reasons why they should give me a pass and they kept repeating the same old message: We want your money. So I came up with a New York law firm with offices on the 67th floor of a 41-story building. The law firm is operated by 3 people who are as imaginary as the floor in their building, but most of the other names are real: Barnubus Q. Blather IV, Wharton E. Wheedle Jr., Dufus M. DeLay III, Richard M. Nixon, Spiro T. Agnew, Thomas W. DeLay, Grover F. Norquist, I. Lewis Libby, Alberto R. Gonzales, E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, Jeb Stuart Magruder, Rose Mary Woods, Robert Heron Bork, Warren G. Harding, Ima B. Crook, Wees Albe Crooks, Albert B. Fall, William Magear Tweed, Richard Joseph Daley, Arch A. Moore, Jr., William Wallace Barron, Robert Alphonso Taft II, Lester Garfield Maddox, William Harrison Frist Sr., Karl Christian Rove, Harriet Ellan Miers, Jesse Alexander Helms Jr., Chester Trent Lott Sr., and Alfred E. Neuman.
On Independence Day, I pleaded for mercy: Dear Dr Smith, La bandeja de entrada más inteligente!
I have heard from Daddy's law firm and they tell me that I can get the $1299 required to open the account, but because of federal regulations (something about penalty for early withdrawal) I need to have $129.90 in cash. Because of the way Daddy setup my trust fund, it's very hard to get my hands on any cash at all. I have managed to come up with $35.07 and I hope that you can help with the rest. If you can, I can then obtain the funds from Mrs. Laura Kingston and use them to assist the needy here.
I think I have scanned a copy of the letter from the attorneys and I hope that I've managed to attach it to this message. I believe that it explains the situation.
This is a holiday weekend in the United States, Dr Smith. I believe that Ima Phullasheet will not be back in the office now until Monday, so I hope we can work out something before then.
Kindest personal regards and La bandeja de entrada más inteligente!
Aw, Heck! I Blew it Again.
I've overplayed the part. "Doctor" "Smith" isn't willing to help. I'm dropping this attempt and reworking my act. Stay tuned for the next episode.
A Random Thought
"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination."
—
Albert Einstein
The Cost of Duplicity (That's a Pun, Son.)
When my younger daughter asked me to order some CD blanks for her to use in sending files to her clients, I selected the RIDATA brand based in large part on cost. Oddly, it's less expensive to buy many brands of DVD blanks than CD blanks these days. Because I was nearly out of CD blanks, I ordered some for me, too. RIDATA (Ritek) has a decent reputation and I was a bit surprised when the CD blanks arrived in wrappers that indicated they had been manufactured in Viet Nam. When it comes to DVDs, the best quality blanks come from Japan. CDs are a bit less touchy than DVDs. So far, I've burned only a few CDs, but they seem to be OK. Longevity might still be a question, though.
For CDs, longevity isn't a primary concern for me. When I burn a disc that contains data I want to keep for more than a few months, I'll use a DVD. CDs are the media I use when I need to send a relatively small file or group of files (up to 700 MB) to a client. All I really need is for the CD to survive long enough to reach the client. The RIDATA discs seem to be more than capable of that.
Ritek's webiste says: As an ISO certified company, Ritek upholds the highest standards for quality management processes. You can trust that the Ridata brand of discs are consistently manufactured to the highest quality standards in the world. Through our in-depth research and development efforts, we offer a large assortment of red and blue laser disc formats and capacities to fit every recording and storage need. What's interesting about this is that the Ritek website doesn't mention CD blanks, only DVDs.
Ritek moved its manufacturing equipment for CD-R discs from its subsidiaries in Germany and Northern Ireland to its Viet Nam subsidiary in 2005. In a news release at the time, Ritek noted that the equipment is valued at $56.7 million.
Ritek said that it planned to phase out production in Europe to minimize production costs. As of that time, Ritek had not moved any of its equipment to subsidiaries in China because used equipment cannot be imported into China. Ritek’s primary market focus is high-speed DVD+R/-R discs and DVD+R DL discs.
How Long Must We Wait?
Any time spent waiting for a computer is wasted. Windows in general and Vista in particular waste a lot of my time as I wait for the machine to become ready. Apple's OSX takes a little less time, but the real winner (if I want to limit the amount of time I have to wait) is Linux.
At 19:44:20 one recent evening (that's 7:44:20 pm if you don't like 24-hour clocks) I clicked the "continue" button on a Linux system and a Windows system after entering my password. The Windows system had an extreme advantage because the computer has a dual-core CPU that runs at 2.7GHz and has 2GB of RAM. The machine that has Linux installed is a 1.4GHz single-core machine with just 1GB of RAM. Even worse, Ubuntu Linux is installed within the Windows file system, which causes it to run more slowly than it would if installed in a partition on the disk.
- The Ubuntu machine was ready for me to use it at 19:44:50 (yes, that's just 30 seconds). And keep in mind that this was on a far slower machine than the one Vista is running on.
- The Windows Vista machine had reached a semi-usable state at 19:45:50 (60 seconds) but there was still lots of disk activity. The machine was actually ready to use at 19:48:30 (3 minutes 40 seconds).
What does all this mean? Possibly not much. If you're the kind of person who comes into the office, starts the computer, and goes off to have breakfast, you won't notice much difference. But if you're the kind of person who fires up the computer and wants to start working right away, you might find the Windows delay more than a little annoying.
Nerdly News
AMD: Maybe no More Fab
Fab is short for "fabrication" and it wasn't that many years ago that Advanced Micro Devices described grand plans to open new fabs (plants) with ever-smaller tolerances to produce ever smaller and more powerful processors. Now it seems that AMD is about to scrap the plants and outsource manufacturing. Wow! What a change.
The story is in the San Jose Mercury News this week. The story by Mark Boslet notes that AMD's stock has fallen from a 2006 high of more than $40 to today's price, in the neighborhood of $4 and says that the company has been working for more than a year on a plan to survive. That plan should be announced by the end of the year and Boslet says the company has hinted that it will outsource manufacturing.
AMD has lost more than $5 billion in the past 7 quarters. The company could put its manufacturing plants in Dresden, Germany, on the block. Making things worse is the company's purchase of graphics chip maker ATI in 2006. AMD also has an option to build a plant in New York, but construction has never started.
Boslet notes that AMD already has experience with outsourcing because ATI graphics chips are made in Taiwan and it works with IBM to develop future chip production technologies. By outsourcing, AMD would have to share profits with another company, but would also share risk. AMD's manufacturing operations are well respected as efficient operations, so there's a downside to outsourcing. But it may be the only way to save the company.
Do You Have 3.7 Million Credit Cards?
Each of 11 people did. Well, not actually 3.7 million cards each. But federal prosecutors say 11 people stole more than 41 million credit card and debit card numbers. One of them could be spending a great deal of time in prison. So now I know what that letter I received from American Express a week or so ago was all about.
Secret Service director Mark Sullivan and Attorney General Michael Mukasey jointly announced that charges had been filed against 11 people who obtained the credit and debit card numbers from companies such as OfficeMax, Barnes and Noble, BJ’s Wholesale Club, the Sports Authority and T.J.Maxx.
Charged as the ringleader, Albert Gonzalez of Miami faces charges of computer fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy and other charges. He could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted on all counts. Others charged are from Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, and China. Although they have been "indicted", the government doesn't know where they are or how to get them.
Prosecutors say that Gonzales and his friends parked outside stores and scanned wireless networks to find security holes. It was one of the stores victimized by the attacks, T.J.Maxx, that alerted the government to the problem last year.
When the crooks found openings, they tapped into credit card processing systems to grab card numbers and other information stored there. They sold credit card numbers online or used the information to fabricate their own cards with the appropriate magnetic strips. Then they used the card to drain bank accounts.
This wasn't Gonzalez's first brush with the Secret Service. He was arrested on similar charges in 2003, but was placed on supervised pretrial release. Supposedly, he became an informant for the government but continued his illegal actions.
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