Scamorama: Turning the Tables on Email Scammers [Paperback]

Eve Edelson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2006

This book is about liars telling lies with compound interest to other liars. A -struggle is being waged on the Internet between criminals and comedians. On one side are fraudsters who con their victims out of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. The basic tool of the trade is e-mail, and the crime is the infamous “419” scam—a form of fraud whose current masters hail from Nigeria and which gets its name from section 419 of the Nigerian criminal code. It begins with an e-mail from a stranger:

I am soliciting your assistance as to enable my family round up the remains of our life. Following the death of my husband Sani Abacha, former head of state of Nigeria, the new president has turned the country against us . . . I will be grateful if you could receive my last $50 million for safe keeping. I will give you 10% as a commission and to cover any expenses . . .

On the other side of the struggle, pranksters from around the world are writing back to scammers strictly to waste their time. The resulting literary genre is -scambaiting—psychological warfare for clowns. Some anti-scammers go further, breaking into scammers’ e-mail accounts to warn off their victims, and helping law enforcement.

This book documents a weird form of cultural exchange made possible by the Internet. It is a hilarious introduction to the “419” scam, with correspondences between scammers and people who love to yank their chains.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Eve Edelson has written plays and short stories, and played bass guitar in various obscure bands. She has worked in IT and been published in a number of computer security journals. She is the owner of the popular website Scamorama.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: The Disinformation Company (September 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932857389
• ISBN-13: 978-1932857382
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,577,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's about time..., October 8, 2006

By 

camaysar (NYC, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scamorama: Turning the Tables on Email Scammers (Paperback)

... someone harvested the entertainment potential afforded by those "URGENT BUSINESS PROPOSITION" letters we all see in our email inboxes. The scammers are apparently involved in "advance fee fraud". Many people think the game is that they promise millions, then they ask you to give up bank info, then they go in and steal your account (boy would they be disappointed in mine!). But no.... without giving up all the details, the goal for the scammers is to ask the victim to forward various fees before he can collect the promised millions.

But the fun part, and the true raison d'etre of Ms. Edelson's book, is to report on the ANTI-SCAMMERS who have played along, and made the scammers jump through hoops for such intended victims as "Princess Margaret", "Bart Simpson", etc etc etc. The scammers are serious criminals, but they end up falling victim to the same weaknesses they seek to bring out in their own victims... namely, the ever-popular greed and gullibility.

Ms. Edelson clearly has a thing for this stuff... she loves it! The book is the outgrowth of her website, scamorama. Nigerian scammers and Eve Edelson...It's nice to see such a match made in heaven, like fried chicken and Col. Sanders. It's a great read because Ms. Edelson has a breezily funny-sarcastic style. She is the voice of authority on the subject, but a fun-loving and clever authority. She also gives a short course in how YOU can idle away fun-filled hours making a MUGU (scammer lingo for their victim: "fool") out of a criminal who wants to rob you.

The info she provides, including the technical aspect, is fascinating, and the selection of back-and forths ("Comedy Breaks") between scammers and the anti-scammers they had the bad luck to reach are hysterically funny. It was a revelation to see the creativity and humor unleashed in the anti-scammers; these people seem to have been just sitting and waiting for the chance to out-scam a scammer.

A great read that reveals a new world of internet criminality, and is laugh-out-loud funny as well!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For Fun or Edumacation, November 22, 2006

By 

Lise L. LaTorre (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Scamorama: Turning the Tables on Email Scammers (Paperback)

This book is so fun and funny for folks that are well versed in the scam, and a fortune-saver for those who aren't. I ended up laughing aloud (in public no less) but also felt chagrined as I recognized the scams Ive almost fallen for in the past.

Read it for fun, but then pass it on to someone less scam savvy!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An entirely new form of humor, November 5, 2006

By 

James V. Palmer "JimPalmer" (St. Louis) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scamorama: Turning the Tables on Email Scammers (Paperback)

Eve Edelson's new compendium of the best exchanges between 419 scam artists (who bilked Americans out of more than $250,000 last year) and those who bait them is jaw-droppingly funny, and important on several levels.

First, it's all about making life difficult for criminals. 419ers make their living preying off the elderly, the naive, the weak-minded, and those who just generally shouldn't be online. They are also dangerous, having killed before. The baiters, a fine and crreative possel of virtual vigilantes who waste the scammers' time, their money, their resources, and their patience are worthy of our admiration for that reason alone.

But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this book is a harbinger of a new kind of humor. Scambaiting is a humor genre that couldn't exist without the 'net, and there is already a huge and growing crop of artists (yep, I call them artists) who are exploiting this new medium and making us laugh as they do it.

Ms. Edelson, the doyenne of scambaiting, has culled, nurtured, edited, and generally midwifed this vibrant new form of humor. This book is a collection of the best of the best of the new masters of the form. I'll be watching to see where the medium goes from here.

So there you are. Three reasons to buy it. One, it's your civic duty. Two, it's your chance to get in on the ground floor of a completely new kind of humor. And three, you'll laugh your socks off.