7/27/2006

Some cleanup

I have an interesting article to post but it's not finished. I'm trying to make is good enough for not technical people to understand. It's about a phishing operation very well planned and organized. It took a lot of reporting and explaining to ISPs but it was worth it. The whole operation is gone... and it will be back.
Meanwhile, I want to remember all the scammers that are trying to login to their mail accounts and can't do it anymore. It's not exactly like that. They have plenty of mail accounts and they can open as many as they want. But every one closed may has meant one victim saved, at least annoying the scammer, and it only takes one click at the forward button.
You'll notice on the list that almost all are Yahoo mail accounts. The main reason is that their abuse department sends a notification when it "takes action". Whatever that means, the account is closed. Other mail services may take action or not, I just can infere they did because I don't get more mail from that account. Tracking every report to its final conclusion is a day job and I have one already.
Also, you'll notice that a lot of names are similar or the same. Sometimes is the same scammer coming back for more (why dissapoint them?) and some other are names of public personalities like Mariam Abacha (wife of the late nigerian dictator Sani Abacha), Charles Soludo (governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria) or Charles Taylor (ex liberian leader on the run).
Good stories needs some undeniable truth underneath to support them. Even if you don't know this personalities, you'll find information about them to confirm that they exist and that the story is possible.
Some others are names that are referred somewhere on the web where you can go and verify the story. For example, the names used for inheritance scams are taken from lists of people who died in airplane crashes, train crashes, 9/11. You can go to news web sites and look for this stuff.
Lately, there are many scams about US troops finding the money that Hussein (any of them, Saddam, Usay, Who-am-i) had stashed somewhere in Iraq. The names are taken from news too and the most popular seems to be Robert Seidel, a first lieutenant who died in Bagdad. Why did they take this name?, is a mistery. They could have taken any other name or made one up. But it seems that they are unable to come up with a western name. Don't ask me why, when the scammers want to impersonate a western person they're always Smiths and Jones or movie actors (Dr Jack Chan, also known as Jackie, is on the list) or variants of a movie actor name that somehow end up sounding even more fake than the original like Clint Southwood.
Other interesting thing is that the mail addresses have number, lots of numbers. Mostly because they use the same names over and over again. I bet that there are at least a thousand Abacha's in Yahoo right now, and I mean the active accounts only. Also, they open mail accounts in series, xxxx01, xxxx02, etc. This way, if one is closed and they have a "work in progress" linked to it, they can move to the next and pretend nothing has happened.

A sample of the kind of people we're dealing with.
Last week I won the Netherlands lottery. I answered the mail in dutch, I though it was a nice touch to use their language as a way to thank them for the price. Actually, it wasn't dutch, I don't speak dutch. But I made it looks like dutch. The agent in charge of my payment asked me to use english. So I replied "I though you'd like me to write in dutch". And he answered "No, we do speak english here, we're not germans" (SIC).
It's hard to believe that this kind of person is able to scam money from other but it happens...

And here's the list in alphabetical order:

agatha_denis@yahoo.fr
agatha_g5@yahoo.com.au
agentgeorgesimmons01@yahoo.com
agentgeorgesimmons5@yahoo.com
akachi_emego@yahoo.com
alart_efcc@yahoo.co.uk
angealfred_01@yahoo.ca
arafatsuha10@yahoo.com
barclaysbankofficials@yahoo.co.uk
barister_prince@yahoo.com
barr_cemonynana@yahoo.co.uk
barri_frankbrightchambers4law@yahoo.com
canada_agent_tob2006@yahoo.com
cbngov_624_soludo@yahoo.co.uk
cbngov_c_soludo@yahoo.com
charlesaka_office44@yahoo.co.uk
claims_swtbplc@yahoo.com
cyrile27_chambers@yahoo.com
dallicklucy@yahoo.co.in
david_hill06@yahoo.com
donalson1060@yahoo.com
dr_musahalloma@yahoo.com
drjackchan@yahoo.com
eminentleo2004@yahoo.com
emma5050tg@yahoo.com
fmenv_27.3million@yahoo.com
goodwill_akanakpa002@yahoo.co.in
goodwill_akanakpa02@yahoo.co.in
guei@terra.com.mx
harrisjames01@yahoo.co.uk
hazmanbinharun5@yahoo.com
honda_claimsagent1@yahoo.co.uk
info_uk1@yahoo.co.uk
infoprocessing_cbn@yahoo.ca
jackreinschmidt9878@yahoo.com
james_benson502@yahoo.ca
jimmy_guei@yahoo.fr
jnumvette211@yahoo.com
john_mercy002@yahoo.com
joy_martin007@yahoo.fr
joybrown090@yahoo.com
kabah_olivier@yahoo.fr
king_harry5@yahoo.fr
lamine_kone_14@yahoo.com
lchristopher4000@yahoo.co.uk
mabachah1675@yahoo.com.ar
malik_regan2005@yahoo.co.uk
maryann_preeety@yahoo.com
mudisat_brown06@yahoo.ca
my_1jones@yahoo.co.uk
nkemyz_tyoli300@yahoo.ca
onukelechi_747@yahoo.com
petel05@yahoo.com
porkar234@yahoo.com
prince_ennita@yahoo.ca
prof_charlessoludo405@yahoo.com
rabikujio@yahoo.fr
rev_will_kingsley147@yahoo.com
robertseidel2003@yahoo.ca
robertseidel2006@yahoo.com.au
rosemary_collins543@yahoo.com.sg
rosepeterci@yahoo.fr
sir_wilkins202@yahoo.com
sule_i1@yahoo.com.mx
sule_ibrahim_nrc@yahoo.com
sule_j_4u@yahoo.com
tadiga2006@yahoo.co.in
tombrown1024@yahoo.com
tonygood102@yahoo.ca
tonypaul080@yahoo.com
vc_obi@yahoo.co.uk
vivian_uk40@yahoo.com
zuma_edwards2005@yahoo.ie


Farewell my friends, I know you'll be back and I'll be waiting for you

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