Robert Price: If it sounds fishy, rest assured it is
| Saturday, Mar 21 2009 07:42 PM
Last Updated Monday, Mar 30 2009 04:24 PM
Craig Garrett has returned from his harrowing African ordeal looking remarkably healthy and untroubled. If he has your e-mail in the address book of his Hotmail account, you may have already been apprised of the frightening details. But here, for others' benefit, is the story:
Stranded in a ritzy hotel in Lagos, Nigeria, having left his cash, credit cards and passport in a taxi cab, Garrett finds himself hungry and almost-but-not-quite homeless. Desperate, he goes to the Lagos city library and e-mails everyone he knows, begging them to send money via Western Union. He needs $1,050 for the room, pronto, plus an additional $1,250 "to feed and help myself (get) back home." He has traveled to Africa for an HIV/AIDS conference — and just look at all the trouble his good intentions have brought him.
I learned about all of this when Garrett's pleading e-mail dropped into the newspaper's letters-to-the-editor box three days ago. We'd published his letters before, so I called him, leaving phone messages at his house and at his place of employment, Sun Pacific Farms. Ten minutes later, he called me back.
Yes, that's his e-mail address, all right, but — brace for a shocker — no, he is still right here in Kern County and, no, he has never been to Africa, for HIV/AIDS research or any other purpose.
"Anybody who knows me knows I would never pay that much for a hotel room," Garrett said.
(For what it's worth, Garrett has made eight visits to India to visit a karate buddy — a mere 4,500 miles east of Nigeria.)
Within 48 hours, Garrett had heard from perhaps 20 friends, all wanting to know if he was OK. One had called to apologetically say she couldn't send the full amount (but, fortunately, hadn't sent any at all — yet).
The scheme sounds exactly like a new scam sweeping the country that has already victimized a minister in Akron, Ohio, and a religious studies institute in Cleveland, among many others. It works like this: Hotmail users respond to an official-looking query that says a high number of unused accounts is slowing down the system. Active users are asked to verify they're still using their accounts by supplying key pieces of information.
Garrett did so, and soon afterward realized he no longer had access to his own e-mail account — and no quick, effective way of warning his friends not to send any money to Mr. Olasoji Perez, who's supposedly staying in room 6 of the Eko Hotel & Suites (a luxurious-looking Lagos hotel that actually exists).
I was determined to help, but having no expertise in information technology, identity protection or international criminal law, I offered up the only thing I am any good at: harassment.
I don't have the space here to share my entire exchange with Evil Craig, but suffice to say the Nigerian scammer agreed to pose in his boxer shorts for the Buttonwillow Alfalfa Cooperative's 2010 calendar, help Harvey Hall keep a llama out of his yard, and take a fictitious friend's fictitious cousin Lois to the movies, among other indignities and annoyances.
Think of it as a bored middle-aged man trying out his sitcom screenwriting chops — "Greenacres" as if Tim Burton were directing — while simultaneously taunting a dirtbag, identity-stealing cyber-scammer. Stubblebuzz.comhas the entire, silly conversation.
I also briefly cruised the Internet, trying to find this Olasoji Perez. No dice there, but as it turns out, wasting scammers' time by holding out the hope of a big score is a highly refined pastime known as scambaiting. It's great fun.
The real Craig Garrett has already devoted a portion of his weekend to sorting things out. Fortunately, none of his friends or associates have fallen for the scam, as far as he knows.
If he should ever run into trouble in Nigeria (now even less likely than before) he'll be calling upon the American Embassy, not his Hotmail account. That karate thing might come in handy, too.
E-mail Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com , and check out his negotiations with Evil Craig at Stubblebuzz.com .
