No doubt, you have gotten at one time an e-mail claiming to be from a prince in Nigeria or some far-of country, stating that his father has died and left him a large sum of money and that this prince wants to share his wealth with you, a complete stranger...

This is merely a example of thousands of variations of an e-mail scam. Scams that people fall for every day. I recently did an e-mail interview with a member and moderator of the website www.419eater.com, dedicated to scamming scammers. Due to what these folks do (Scambaiting), for safety reasons, I won't divulge the real identity of this person I interviewed. I will say that they go by the screen name of Sheboppe on 419eater.com. Due to security reasons, my introduction will be vague and short.

Sheboppe is from the Western part of the United States. Their profession is in business and they are a moderator on the anti-scam site 419Eater, and a Scam Victim Support site www.scamwarners.com. Members of 419Eater are very active scam baiters, meaning that they bait scammers. They are the biggest anti-scam site in the world. At Scamwarners, They support victims of many kinds of scams, offering advice and help. Many victims come to them seeking support. Sheboppe is proud to be a moderator on such great sites, and glad to be part of the anti-scam world.

Now, the interview...

1) We always hear from friends and family and even now in a media push here in the States, warning us to not fall for email scams. But some people may not be able to tell what an email scam is or even what one looks like. I tell people "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is". In a nut shell, tells us what an email scam is, or more specifically, what are these "Nigerian" scams?

"An email scam is where the sender of the email is promising something for very little or nothing, merchandise at prices that are too good to be true, emails claiming to be from banks, PayPal, eBay or other places asking the recipient to update his personal information. These are known as "phishing" emails, and are used for the purpose of committing identity theft.

"Nigerian scams are actually any kind of scam. They are called "Nigerian Scams" because at the beginning, they originated from Nigeria. Scams are very widespread and currently originate from all over the world. The Nigeria scams are predominantly advance fee scams."