Stealing Horses, a New Low in Online Scams

This webpage that I ran across the other day is both really funny and sad at the same time. The last time we posted for a roommate on Craigslist, we got almost nothing but replies from scammers looking to pull a quick bank fraud trick on us. I thought that was about as low as it got, but it gets better.

Apparently, the same trick is being pulled on animal sales. I ran into this website called the "Cowboy Way Classifieds" that specializes in Cowboy stuff, especially horses. They have a page dedicated to exposing common scams that scammers use to defraud the rodeo boys out of horses and money.

CowboyWay Scam alerts for Sellers and Buyers:
link:http://www.cowboyway.com/ads/index.php?a=28&b=142

That is really sad. Along the same lines, 20/20 had a feature last Friday on the Nigerian email scam. They went to Nigeria and reported on how poor and desperate many young men are so they prey off of greedy Americans. There's even a song and video about it. Scams have always been against the law in Nigeria but they've only been enforcing it recently. They showed one cop who said he had to bust his own boss for doing it. They busted several scammers, but there are just so many. It is sad that scammers do what they do but it's also sad that Americans who fall for it do so out of greed.

Here's the 20/20 link. It's a slide show that isn't as interesting as the TV piece but Slides 5 & 6 explain the music video.

Go to http://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=ni...ng&type=feature
Click on Nigerian Scammers at Work
Dec. 7, 2006