http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,2-1506-1196477,00.html This is from the times. This is very good...


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,2-1506-1196477,00.html

August 01, 2004

Edinburgh festival: Wham bam thank you for the spam
Bored, Dean Cameron decided to reply to an e-mail scam. He tells Mark
Fisher all about it





Using the word "spam" for junk mail was inspired by a Monty Python
sketch in which the word was repeated ad nauseam. But even at its most
surreal, Monty Python was never as bizarre as the nine-month exchange of
e-mails the American actor Dean Cameron entered into when he replied to
a Nigerian spammer.

With multiple identities, secret codes and guacamole recipes, the
internet conversation became what Cameron calls a "spam scam scam" in
which the would-be victim outwitted the fraudster. Now Cameron has
turned his hilarious correspondence into a true-life fringe show. It
promises to be this year's answer to Dave Gorman's Googlewhack
Adventure.

Feeling besieged by unwanted e-mail, Cameron would send spoof replies
for his own amusement. "I would always reply with one line, which was:
'Great! Do you have any toast?'," he says. "It just so happened that
this one Nigerian spammer decided to answer back and I believe I've
ruined his life. I strung him along for nine months, continuing to say,
yeah I'll get the money to you, but first let's talk about my cats."

The spammer had two identities, that of Mariam Abacha and of her son
Ibrahim. They claimed to have had their assets frozen by the Nigerian
government and wanted Cameron's help in transferring their money to a
bank in Amsterdam.

If Cameron could pay the $1,800 transfer charges being imposed by the
cargo manager of the security firm, they'd give him a cut of the cash.
Most of this was written in capital letters.

"Once they responded, I wrote back and created this character called
Dean Cameron who was a lonely millionaire in Florida who lived with his
cats and his houseboy named Kwan and was nuts," says Cameron, a Los
Angeles TV and film actor. "I would keep dropping hints about the money
I had, talking about how my cats were going to get $100,000 after I
died, so I became this person who was just crazy enough to fall for
their scam."

He used tactics of delay, diversion and obfuscation, always finding good
reasons not to send the money. He said he'd made a cheque out in the
wrong currency, offered the equivalent value of postage stamps, claimed
not to understand how the international banking system worked and sent
$4 as a test.

His e-mails were full of confusingly irrelevant details about his
favourite television programme (an American series called Mister
Sterling in which he had a part). He offered to send them avocados and
provided a recipe for guacamole.

In return for the photographs he sent of his cats, the Nigerian sent
pictures of Abacha and of two suitcases stuffed with US dollars. Upping
the stakes, Cameron introduced a new character. "I forwarded him an
e-mail from another Nigerian spammer saying: 'Hey, what a coincidence,
someone else is having the same problems you are.' He said this great
thing: 'Don't trust any e-mails coming from Nigeria.' What a wonderful
paradox."

The paradox didn't end there. Ibrahim, if that was his name, began
posing as the second Nigerian spammer, Dr Donald Abayomi, because
Cameron had claimed to have given Abayomi money without any problem. "It
was just crazy, very Byzantine and really funny," says Cameron.

Relishing the internet's capacity to invent new identities, Cameron
fielded two more characters: his attorneys Perry Mason and Owen
Marshall, taking their names from popular television shows. The lawyers
slowed proceedings either by trying to protect their client or by trying
to defect to the Nigerian's side.

It all ended with a 30-minute phone call in which Cameron pretended to
be both his fictional alter ego and Perry Mason. "It was the same voice
I used when I was trying to get myself out of school when I was a kid,
pretending to be my dad," says Cameron. "He never realised. My Dean
Cameron character would come on and start singing a song and trying to
find the cats, and the cats went under the sofa and he couldn't get
them, so we had to hang up."

But even after the scammer finally found Cameron's webpage and
discovered he himself was being scammed, the surrealism continued. "What
was very funny," says Cameron, a little sad his nine-month hobby is
over, "is that he was writing as the mother, who doesn't exist, saying:
'I can't believe you posted all of our correspondence on this webpage,
you've broken my heart.' Obviously they've read the website and they
know that I know they are fake. It's just paradox after paradox."

There's a serious side to all this as criminals turn increasingly to
internet fraud. Cameron even performed to a seminar of anti-fraud
professionals who were delighted to see someone fooling around with a
conman in a way they were not allowed. "This Nigerian spam can be
dangerous," says Cameron. "They get you to go down to Nigeria and they
kidnap you and hold you hostage until you pay them or they meet you in
Amsterdam and kill you. They're very bad people. I felt good wasting
their time."

Making his first trip to the Edinburgh fringe is a thrill, he says, but
his immersion into the world of double-dealing has made him nervous:
"What if the producers are scamming me to come to Scotland and the
Nigerians are setting this whole thing up?"



Urgent and Confidential: Dean Cameron's Nigerian Spam Scam Scam,
Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 4-30













Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.
This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and
Conditions . Please read our Privacy Policy . To inquire about a licence
to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website .



  ¶ 12:47 AM