So over the past three days, somebody has placed orders for a whole bunch of T-shirts from my online T-shirt store…nearly $1,500 worth of shirts in all.
These orders, each of which is typically for anywhere from ten to twenty shirts, are all placed with different credit cards, and all ship to different addresses, mostly in Ghana and the UK, occasionally in the US. Each has a different name. Yet the same email address is being used for every one of them…an email address on an ISP in Nigeria.
Does this guy really think I’m stupid enough to let him rip me off for fifteen hundred dollars?
Can you get them to send you cash, or some other mechanism by which your payment is guaranteed *before* any product is sent out?
No chance–his goal is to rip me off.
Interesting statistic I stumbled across while looking up information on the Nigerian 419 fraud schemes: “Fraud and theft” are now the nation of Nigeria’s third leading source of revenue (after oil and agriculture). One of the newest twists on the same old same old is to place online orders with stolen credit cards or forged cashier’s checks, and have the goods delivered to peope who then send them on to Nigeria. The people who receive the goods are often dupes themselves, who have been promised that they are part of a “worldwide business” and will get paid for receiving and then re-sending packages; these dupes often are “paid” using counterfeit cashier’s chects themselves.
Can you get them to send you cash, or some other mechanism by which your payment is guaranteed *before* any product is sent out?
No chance–his goal is to rip me off.
Interesting statistic I stumbled across while looking up information on the Nigerian 419 fraud schemes: “Fraud and theft” are now the nation of Nigeria’s third leading source of revenue (after oil and agriculture). One of the newest twists on the same old same old is to place online orders with stolen credit cards or forged cashier’s checks, and have the goods delivered to peope who then send them on to Nigeria. The people who receive the goods are often dupes themselves, who have been promised that they are part of a “worldwide business” and will get paid for receiving and then re-sending packages; these dupes often are “paid” using counterfeit cashier’s chects themselves.
So what shirts does this Nigerian scammer want to get?
All of ’em. Nanohazard, sudo rm -r /, Machiavelli was Right, you name it.
Something ironically appropriate about the latter, now that I think about it.
Interesting side note: Did you know that Machiavelli never intended The Prince to be taken seriously? It was intended as a satire. He wrote it, looked it over, realized that it really wasn’t very funny, and stuck it in a drawer along with a note explaining his intentions for it. It wasn’t published until after his death, and is typically taken in entirely the wrong context.
Just something interesting I learned yesterday.
That’s not what the introductory notes say for my copies of either The Prince or The Discourses on Livy. Those basically agree with each other, and say that Machiavelli was a historian, and was writing the two books with different goals. Discourses was about what was good for a country, based on an analysis of Titus Livy’s history of the Roman empire, and a few other sources. That was what was important to him. The Prince was about what was good for an individual ruler, based largely on the Borgia family, and was written to get in the good graces of the Medicci family (It didn’t work.).
I suppose this is what I get for trusting a single source of information! I did some poking around and was unable to find anything to corroborate my original source, which I will henceforth take with a larger grain of salt.
I do find it odd, however, that something intended to influence his standing with the Medicci family wasn’t even published until 5 years after his death.
Actually, here’s some sources. This is only part of the text from the URLs. You can do more research if you are interested. Recognizing the ability to find anything on the internet if you look hard enough, my google search was on: “machiavelli The Prince satire”
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2852
About halfway down he says:
The Prince is the text for which Machiavelli is most well known, and before completing this discussion of it, it is important to consider one further way of interpreting The Prince in particular and Machiavelli in general, which is at odds with the immoral or amoral Machiavellianisms so far dealt with. This interpretation is based upon the possibility that The Prince may be a satire on the underhand methods used by those in, or aspiring to, positions of power. Rather than the advocate of either the individualistic pursuit of power or a practical politics devoid of ethical considerations, Machiavelli may in fact be their critic, who is exposing, from the perspective of the “ordinary citizen” (Machiavelli, 1961: 30), the corrupt practices of the ruling classes. This reading, which is tempting because it coincides with Machiavelli’s republican sympathies, nevertheless raises two issues: first, satire can sometimes be complicit with its targets, and in Machiavelli’s case, it may be true that he has more than a sneaking admiration for those tactics and strategies which are being ostensibly satirised; secondly, Machiavelli’s emphasis, throughout his work, on effective government, seems to suggest an acceptance, if not a recommendation, of a utilitarian politics which is not only deployed within undesirable regimes.
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/machiavelli.htm:
My take on this book is representative of a widely held (but distinctly minority) view of The Prince, namely, that the book is, first and foremost, a satire, so that many of the things we find in it which are contradictory, morally absurd, and specious are there quite deliberately in order to ridicule two things—first, the Medici family itself and, second, the very notion of tyrannical rule embodied in the government of the Prince (hence, the satire has a firm moral purpose—to expose tyranny and promote republican government). Such a way of reading this text, it should be clear, is distinctly at odds with any reading which assumes that Machiavelli’s analysis and text are totally without ironical undercurrents which qualify, indeed contradict, his literal “message.”
Cliff Notes also mentions the possibility:
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-148,pageNum-83.html
that’s… not true.
So what shirts does this Nigerian scammer want to get?
All of ’em. Nanohazard, sudo rm -r /, Machiavelli was Right, you name it.
Something ironically appropriate about the latter, now that I think about it.
No chance that Nigerians are simply Consumer Whores? 😀
No chance that Nigerians are simply Consumer Whores? 😀
“Buy villaintees, because 1500 Nigerians with the same email address can’t be wrong!”
That’s great!! Franklin, you’ve got to use this!
“Buy villaintees, because 1500 Nigerians with the same email address can’t be wrong!”
I work for a major credit card processor, and you would be appalled to know just how many independant business owners actually do fall for stuff like that, and how often. Nigeria and Indonesia are two of the riskiest countries in the world to ship to. Fraud is a multi-billion problem each year.
It is so refreshing to see someone protecting himself from a charge back!
I work for a major credit card processor, and you would be appalled to know just how many independant business owners actually do fall for stuff like that, and how often. Nigeria and Indonesia are two of the riskiest countries in the world to ship to. Fraud is a multi-billion problem each year.
It is so refreshing to see someone protecting himself from a charge back!
That’s great!! Franklin, you’ve got to use this!
Interesting side note: Did you know that Machiavelli never intended The Prince to be taken seriously? It was intended as a satire. He wrote it, looked it over, realized that it really wasn’t very funny, and stuck it in a drawer along with a note explaining his intentions for it. It wasn’t published until after his death, and is typically taken in entirely the wrong context.
Just something interesting I learned yesterday.
That’s not what the introductory notes say for my copies of either The Prince or The Discourses on Livy. Those basically agree with each other, and say that Machiavelli was a historian, and was writing the two books with different goals. Discourses was about what was good for a country, based on an analysis of Titus Livy’s history of the Roman empire, and a few other sources. That was what was important to him. The Prince was about what was good for an individual ruler, based largely on the Borgia family, and was written to get in the good graces of the Medicci family (It didn’t work.).
that’s… not true.
I suppose this is what I get for trusting a single source of information! I did some poking around and was unable to find anything to corroborate my original source, which I will henceforth take with a larger grain of salt.
I do find it odd, however, that something intended to influence his standing with the Medicci family wasn’t even published until 5 years after his death.
apparently nigerians arent as slick as they think they are. and also people are more retarded than they should be.
People are more retarded than they should be? Brother, do you ever have that right!
apparently nigerians arent as slick as they think they are. and also people are more retarded than they should be.
People are more retarded than they should be? Brother, do you ever have that right!
Actually, here’s some sources. This is only part of the text from the URLs. You can do more research if you are interested. Recognizing the ability to find anything on the internet if you look hard enough, my google search was on: “machiavelli The Prince satire”
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2852
About halfway down he says:
The Prince is the text for which Machiavelli is most well known, and before completing this discussion of it, it is important to consider one further way of interpreting The Prince in particular and Machiavelli in general, which is at odds with the immoral or amoral Machiavellianisms so far dealt with. This interpretation is based upon the possibility that The Prince may be a satire on the underhand methods used by those in, or aspiring to, positions of power. Rather than the advocate of either the individualistic pursuit of power or a practical politics devoid of ethical considerations, Machiavelli may in fact be their critic, who is exposing, from the perspective of the “ordinary citizen” (Machiavelli, 1961: 30), the corrupt practices of the ruling classes. This reading, which is tempting because it coincides with Machiavelli’s republican sympathies, nevertheless raises two issues: first, satire can sometimes be complicit with its targets, and in Machiavelli’s case, it may be true that he has more than a sneaking admiration for those tactics and strategies which are being ostensibly satirised; secondly, Machiavelli’s emphasis, throughout his work, on effective government, seems to suggest an acceptance, if not a recommendation, of a utilitarian politics which is not only deployed within undesirable regimes.
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/machiavelli.htm:
My take on this book is representative of a widely held (but distinctly minority) view of The Prince, namely, that the book is, first and foremost, a satire, so that many of the things we find in it which are contradictory, morally absurd, and specious are there quite deliberately in order to ridicule two things—first, the Medici family itself and, second, the very notion of tyrannical rule embodied in the government of the Prince (hence, the satire has a firm moral purpose—to expose tyranny and promote republican government). Such a way of reading this text, it should be clear, is distinctly at odds with any reading which assumes that Machiavelli’s analysis and text are totally without ironical undercurrents which qualify, indeed contradict, his literal “message.”
Cliff Notes also mentions the possibility:
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-148,pageNum-83.html