“That is why the U.S. is such a great country. Despite our over-lawyered and lawsuit-happy society, we have a perfected legal system that ensures legal disputes have a forum to be heard and resolved. Scammers and spammers have a much more difficult time operating their illegal craft here in this country.” FOR REAL?!???

Has anyone heard of Madoff or Stanford? <That was a rhetorical question but if you haven’t then google them with fraud after their names.

Its a good thing the US has an impressive legal system huh! Decades worth of fraud, billions of dollars lost for large institutions and ordinary individuals but yes, its a good thing that legal system is up and running! People won’t be able to get their money back but YES its a good thing that legal system is up and running.

Please, jump off your high horse and see the bigger picture. Also thank you for showing the colors of a true American. While I can understand that spam messages are just too much of a hassle in a busy American life , these classic American fraudsters have stolen more, and affected the American economy more than those 419 scammers have. The present day troubles of these third world countries started with the deleterious effects of colonialism. Even the commenters on this blog don’t seem very educated…take the first one “Very information artcile. I did not realize Nigeria was an English speaking country and that’s why scams can orginiate from there” Maybe I should do a run-down of every English speaking country and its connection to the Crown.

Although, society has done well in educating you blokes about which countries to visit and which ones to stay away from. American society has raised you well!

ANY GUYS WORKING IN A BANK ON HERE?

Thanks for dropping by! Sorry if what I wrote seemed offensive. I’m just trying to protect my readers based on what I’ve been exposed to. I have no personal prejudices…it’s just purely economical and business related reasons that I advise against dealing with people from certain countries. I hope Bulgaria and Romania’s introduction into the EU will help encourage better system controls and further development of their legal systems.

Big corporations have ways to deal with corruption and illegal activities, but small time amateur business types like myself often get ripped off by unscrupulous online scammers. Oftentimes we have to generalize and take extra precautions, even if that means we have to be extra picky or over discerning.

For what it’s worth, Eastern Europe isn’t as bad as Africa or South East Asia on this matter….

Thanks for your nice website. Concerning this article, I just want to remind (tell) you that Romania and Bulgaria are now part of the european union and are not ‘third world countries’. Even though Bulgaria seems to face a lot of corruption problems they both have (and especially romania) a fairly good legal system. I understand you prefer to deal with people from your own country but please be careful of the sometimes too easy stereotypes. Please continue to give us nice info on this blog.

Mat

I am still getting bombarded by 419 spam emails today. When will they stop and leave me be?

There used to be this online program called Blue Frog run by a company called Blue Security a few years ago that was successful at countering against spam emails for a while. It worked by redirecting spam mail back to its source via automatically generated electronic complaints. It worked too well and resulted in a massive spammer retaliatory attack that ultimately took the company’s website servers off line. I guess the spammers won because the Blue Frog program is now gone. I hope this new Black Frog version they are working on will get resurrected one day. We can only hope.

I wonder how succesful these scams are. I know there was a story on it a while back by Chris Hanson (dateline I think).

Andy.