The money came from a Citibank account in New York held by the National Bank of Ethiopia, that country’s central bank. Prosecutors said the conspirators, contacted by Citibank to verify the transactions, posed as Ethiopian bank officials and approved the transfers.

The story doesn’t indicate whether anyone was made to perform and film their rendition of the Cheese Shop sketch.

[NYTimes, via Making Light, via BoingBoing]

Metimbers & friends have taken scam-baiting to new levels, engaging in often long & complex exchanges with scammers and formulating bizarre storylines to keep them engaged, tantalising them with promises of cash, but ultimately just trying to use up as much of their time & resources as possible.  One of the devices often employed is to get the scammers to have photos taken of themselves with object or holding signs up (as a precautionary measure, because there’s so many scammers out there – you’ve got to make sure you’re talking to the person you believe you are).

There’s loads of excellent exchanges, such as one where the baiter convinces the scammer that it’s a fortunate coincidence that the scammer made contact with him, as he is looking into opening a factory in Nigeria to make pies out of hare meat (having superior yield to rabbit), and needs a business partner.  The scammer, desperate to screw his target out of money, agrees, and among all sorts of other ridiculous instructions, sends a photo of himself and a group of others holding up signs that say “I love eating hare pie”.

You get the idea (hopefully).  Anyway, far and away my favourite scam bait involves Metimbers convincing the scammer to send him a 10 inch tall wooden carving of Metimbers’ head (which he does), then convinces the him to send video of him reading from one of Metimbers’ TV company’s scripts (it all makes sense if you read it).  Brilliantly, the scammer engages a couple of actors and a premises and records the script sent – clearly without any idea of what it is – and then follows up with trying to claim expenses back, by which time the scammer’s well and truly been had.

So here’s the video that was sent across:

Click here to view the embedded video.

XD

(It’s probably worth noting, as it does on 419eater.com, that scambaiting can potentially be dangerous and nobody should enter into it without being fully aware of what they may be getting into.  More info on the site.)