Taking money from a scammer

[MIB]

The post in the General Topics boards title Scamming the Scammer got me thinking.

This probably won't work if the Nigerians are too smart

What if you were to reply to these scammers and they''ll tell how to transfer money into your bank account. Which isn't going to happen because they will clean out your account after giving them account numbers.

After a couple of days write back and them you are going to open an account for them to transfer money to. BUT tell them the bank you are dealing with needs $100,000 minimum to open the account. Ask the scammers if they can send you the money to open the account. If they agree, find a way for them to send you the money legitimately so the government won't think there's any money laundering or other crimes going on.

Take the money and deposit it. Then go to an accountant and have them run some numbers to see how much the IRS gets. Cut a check for the IRS and pay the taxes.

Question is: Will this be against the law somehow?

After all the scammer sent you the money voluntarily. As you didn't use any type of extortion, threats etc. to get it.

Second, you paid the required taxes on the money. So there's no possible tax evasion charges.

If the scenario is legal, maybe everyone should do and make these scammers penniless.

Thoughts? Opinions?

MIB

[ataxicwolf]

It certainly sounds like it's worth a try. I'd first try and do it for some tiny amount of money like, 20 dollars or so, and see where it'll take you. As for whether or not its legal, I have no idea.

[Zazen]

It's been done many times. Lookup scambaiting in google, there are dozens of instances of people tricking nigerian scammers out of small amounts of cash. The thing is that it is illegal for the same reason that it's illegal when they scam money out of you. Unless you are really going to use their money in the way that they agreed, you're committing fraud. Of course no one will reasonably enforce that.

The best baits I've read lately are the ones where the scammer pays to get packages sent to them in africa. There's this one guy who does that a lot who gets scammers to pay freight for "laptops" and sends old toilets and broken stoves instead. I read one where the guy shelled out more than 30 grand.

[MattGSX]

Zazen has it right on the head. And if you think that the US government wouldn't go after you if they found out about it, I think you have another thing coming. If you're receiving "good faith" money from Nigerians (which is basically what you'd be sending), the government would love to prosecute you as an American crime affiliate. With our government essentially helpless to stop the Chinese counterfeiting problem and the apparent implosion of the economy, they'd be more than happy to create a scapegoat and try to get as much media attention as possible.

Also, you'd need a false identity pretty well established already. Many overseas crime syndicates do have people established in the US, and I know I've already read stories about people trying to scam Nigerians (or just pull out of the scam) after they'd been scammed themselves only to get roughed up, mugged, or kidnapped and taken to Nigeria or other countries to be ransomed back to their families. They may be stupid, but you're dealing with professional crime syndicates here, and even in the third world, the mob never forgets.

Great idea, but totally not worth it.