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Nigerian spammers keep on duping the dopey:
The long-running internet-based rort has netted more than $7 million from Queenslanders alone …
Among those being duped are financial advisers, lawyers and university professors, and one person had put $2.2 million into the hands of scammers over the past two years.
Which brings to mind Queenslanders Margo Kingston and Wayne Sanderson. How is Webdiary coping without them? Let’s take a look:
We published 35 new posts in January … income in January was $2862, plus the cash GST refund of $523 as per the last accounts. The rate of income was not (quite) sufficient to cover expenditure, so the Directors gave a month’s notice to Hamish in mid-January.
Judging from those numbers, each post—each futile, dull, worthless post—cost nearly $100. Webdiary might be the single worst business model in publishing history.
UPDATE. Webdiary general manager David Roffey is now complaining about “the number of unpaid hours I’ve put in since September”. And these people thought they could fix Australian democracy.
I think their only hits were coming from this site.
Posted by Oafish and Infantile on 2006 02 02 at 02:49 AM • permalinkC’mon, lawyers are smart! just look at Mr Lefty…
ok- maybe not then.Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2006 02 02 at 03:09 AM • permalinkI was speaking to a client who had dome some work in Nigeria recently. He was in Nigeria for about 3 months and stayed at the local Sheraton. About once a week he’d spot an Aussie in the lobby, get to talk to them and find out that they’d been scammed. He said when you tried to tell them they’d been scammed they wouldn’t believe it.
What I find hard to believe is that the scam is still effective despite it being one of the most publicised frauds in history.
“We had 9775 unique visitors to the new site in the month, who made just over 3.4 visits each: on business days, around 1250 visitors each day looked at 5 or 6 pages per visit. Total page views in the month were 219.500, of which just over 40,000 came from webcrawlers and ‘bots – these weren’t separated out in the previous Typepad stats. The webcrawlers and bots aren’t included in the visitor totals. Traffic is highest from 9am to 5pm, and a little lower through the evening.
91% of visits were direct / bookmarked, another 2% came via the old site, and 5% via Google; and the remainder from a wide variety of other sites – more than 200 in all.”
I suddenly feel like a media giant.
Ai! Ai! Nooooooo ...
While I don’t care about the idiots who signed their life savings away, this is a MASSIVE incentive for the spammers to just keep on bombarding us!
Oh well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em at the 3rd Annual Nigerian Email Conference ...
Posted by Lionel Mandrake on 2006 02 02 at 03:31 AM • permalinkJust a word of warning dont go to the top of the page in the web diary link or you will encounter margot’s idiot grinning face. Maybe webdiary could get a peoples commission to investigate its own finances.
Posted by Astonished on 2006 02 02 at 03:42 AM • permalinkThey are getting Sweet Feck All traffic or comments but still manage to ban 18 (I think) posts for being abusive They should be begging to be abused rather than relying solely on self abuse for their jollies.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 02 02 at 04:01 AM • permalinkAnd these people thought they could fix Australian democracy.
Presumably they meant ‘fix’ in the sense of what vets do to tomcats.
Posted by blandwagon on 2006 02 02 at 04:45 AM • permalinkheh. Even my garden gnome’s getting scam letters. He got one today.
Apparently he’s approved for 215,810 euros. He’s doing better than I am - last year he was offered an AMEX.
How on earth do people manage to fall for these things?
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 02 02 at 04:47 AM • permalink#4 - Don’t be too hard on people who fall for scams. I’m as sceptical as the next person but I wouldn’t regard myself as scam-proof. A good scammer can fool even the well-educated and those who reckon they’ve got commonsense. Look at the types for fell for the Budget Rent-A-Car float, Pyramid Building Society, Amway, &c - even the Govt/AWB/Iraq. Crown Casino make a tidy profit from intelligent, clever people who reckon they’re scam-proof. Find the right hook and anyone can be scammed.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 02 02 at 05:46 AM • permalinkFrom The Australian’s Media section today:
Gay Alcorn, three-time Walkley Award winner, was appointed deputy editor of The Age by Andrew Jaspan. Alcorn, described by Jaspan in his official memo to staff as ``a remarkable journalist’‘, becomes the paper’s second deputy editor, alongside Paul Ramadge. Last year Alcorn’s sister Margo Kingston had less luck with The Age’s sibling, The Sydney Morning Herald. After running the paper’s weblog for a number of years, Kingston departed to run her own - a move that unfortunately sent her broke. In December she announced she was giving up the blog, but it still continues with various other contributors, including one Hamish Alcorn as managing editor.OT. Mushtaq Heidelberg has decided to retire from blogging.
Posted by Hank Reardon on 2006 02 02 at 06:35 AM • permalinkHUNDREDS OF MILLIONS I heard a guy on NBC’s Dateline program say a couple of months ago…and that’s just from Americans!
Are these people bloody stupid or what???ps…not just Americans, but anyone who gets caught by this kind of thing.
This is how I routinely reply to these fraudsters when I get one of their emails. WARNING about the language!
I reply: Listen you BLACK CUNT, if you put half as much effort into earning an honest day’s pay as you do into ripping people off, you’d be rich! No wonder Africa is a fucken’ basket-case!
“And these people thought they could fix Australian democracy.”
Who said Democracy was cheap!
Posted by WeekByWeek on 2006 02 02 at 07:10 AM • permalinkWould you all please stop putting down this scam. It makes up a full 10% of my Black Op operating budget.
The money for that Turtle Wax has to come from somewhere you know.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 02 02 at 07:44 AM • permalinkWonder if one of the profs who got singed was the the Quiggster?
Seriously, not all of us yokels in Queensland are dum enough to swallow them Nigerian scams, no siree.
However, when that nice USAF colonel who found the dosh that Saddam had swiped from the AWB and had it stashed in his Abrams M1A1, how could I refuse to help him get it back to the right people (for a fee, of course).
Funny though, the $300M hasn’t hit my account yet, and my Visa card’s bouncing more than a basketballer’s bollocks; and since when did the US airforce get tanks?
#11 i’ve got a very boring & neglected blog - it seemed like a good idea when onto the last velkopopovicky kozel in the 6 pack. it’s had 8 visitors (they told me - nothing so technical as a counter) who are uniformly contemptuous of its lameness. not even my team members post, the rats. if anyone would like to leave a rude message or a maundering semi-rant go to kitty litter
Hundreds of millions, NBC says? Considering the US population is approaching 300 million, that would be 2 out of 3 Americans…
Slightly OT but Sen John Kerry recently said (paraphrased) 53% of American don’t graduate high school.
People believe NBC Dateline and almost half voted for Kerry. What’s the surprise that Nigerians (charming people, BTW) can scam them?
o/t What is happening with the two 14 year old girls who murdered the Iranian taxi driver in South West Sydney.
In view of the fact that the words RACIST crime have not been invoked,could it be assumed that the girls/murderers are not white..?
Relatives were covered from view by clothing as they were put in the car.
The bloke was so unlucky,he had not long had a stroke.
By the sounds of it they were questioned over another crime (stealing) when they were apprehended and had also stabbed and robbed someone else following the murder..
Of course the bleeding hearts (catholic priest etc) were quickly on the tv news excusing them-poor socio economic area,violent videos and movies,where were the parents…..the parents probably know better than to mess with these girls.According to my e-mail, I will soon share in $50M from the former Nigerian Finance Minister’s account, have a huge, continually erect love muscle, a new low interest rate mortgage, will make billions of dollars investing in penny stocks, and lots of teens in my area want to be my plaything.
Fear me internet!
Posted by Some0Seppo on 2006 02 02 at 12:22 PM • permalink91% of visits were direct / bookmarked, another 2% came via the old site, and 5% via Google; and the remainder from a wide variety of other sites – more than 200 in all.
Only 2% of all visits to Webdiary came via links from other sites? Perhaps my expectations are wrong, but that seems to be terrible. Especially when we factor in the number of unique visitors and visits per UV…it seems they got only some 600-700 visits via links to Webdiary. And that’s for at least 200 different inbound links? Wow, just wow. In fact, I bet that Tim alone is responsible for several hundred of those visits, which isn’t leaving much for the other 199+ linking sites. Possible conclusions: Besides Casa Blair, only sites that nobody reads are linking to Webdiary? Or perhaps more likely, nobody bothers to click on links to Webdiary anymore?
As for the fact that they spent in excess of $2862 during the month of January…simply mindboggling, that’s all I’m able to say.
One more…the really depressing (or laugh-out-loud funny, depending on your point of view) thing is that with their 180,000 page views last month, they probably made enough money off their Google ads to make any regular blogger quite happy. Let’s assume the standard 1% click-through rate, then that’s 1,800 click-throughs for the month. Their ads don’t look especially high-standard in quality and keywords, so let’s say 10 cents per click, for $180 in ad income. Doesn’t sound like much, but that’s still over $2,000 for a year.
Of course, that wouldn’t even pay for one month of Webdiary’s current operations. How pathetic.
I am devastated that there now appears to be so little hope for democracy in Australia.
This is how Margo convinced me to work for her on third-world Nike wages. Scrub harder she would say, and democracy might come your way.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 02 02 at 06:11 PM • permalinkED David’s statement, “If we had paid Hamish for the whole of February today, as usual”, must mean that they are paying their employees monthly in advance. Hmmm. Now there’s an interesting business model.
Posted by Happy John on 2006 02 02 at 07:35 PM • permalinkA detailed account of how the Nigerial 419 scam unfolds.
I find a good rule of thumb is: if something sounds too good to be true, it is.
You would think that in America, the home of P. T. Barnum, people would be too wary to fall for this sort of thing. It must be the effect of the public schools, or maybe immigration, or, yes yes, IT’S ALL BUSH’S FAULT!
There is an exchange between two characters in The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monserrat.
“I understand that the First Lieutenant comes from one of the Dominions.”
“Australia.”
“Ah, I have met a few Australians, mostly the victims of confidence tricksters. We can never persuade them that in London they are liable to meet people who are more intelligent than they are.”
“It’s amazing how people will fall for such thing.”
“It is not amazing, but it is, to say the least, continually strange. Do we have tinned sausages often?”
“Very often.”
“Whether this war is long or short it is going to seem long.”
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 02 03 at 12:34 AM • permalinkjpaulg 6
What I find hard to believe is that the scam is still effective despite it being one of the most publicised frauds in history.
Ha! I’m sure glad I don’t have to worry about that. See I just bought some Scam Insurance, from a site, on the internet. It’s great! If I ever get conned by a fraudulent deal, this policy pays me back 150% of my losses!
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 02 03 at 02:05 PM • permalinkA woman was conned out of over 2 million bucks - now, I could make good use of that money, why didn’t she give it to me? I heard that she is likely to be conned out of more.
Some people are really dopey. I am amazed at the number of people I know who forward idiotic emails to me, you know the ones, breast cancer is caused by deodorant and asbestos in tampons, you’d think that people working in a place like I do would have more sense…
They don’t.
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You just know that within 10 years they’ll be in a business school text book case study.