January 31, 2008 6:30 AM PST
Those Nigerian spam scams? They actually come from Nigeria
Wow. Who knew that Nigerians were actually behind those Nigerian spam attacks (at least some of them)? Nigeria should certify and trademark its spam the way Florida does its orange juice.
The US Department of Justice has actually wrung confessions out of two Nigerian men and one Senegalese man (who maybe thought he was Nigerian).
I love their aliases:
Pleading guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York were Nnamdi Chizuba Anisiobi, whose aliases include Yellowman, Abdul Rahman, Michael Anderson, Edmund Walter, Nancy White, Jiggaman and Namo, age 31, of Nigeria; Anthony Friday Ehis, also known as John J. Smith, Toni N. Amokwu and Mr. T, age 34, of Senegal; and Kesandu Egwuonwu, also known as KeKe, Joey Martin Maxwell, David Mark and Helmut Schkinger, age 35, of Nigeria.
Who says entrepreneurship is dead in Nigeria? If these guys built a website that lets you share slides to rob VCs of a massive valuation they'd be rich. But because they send spam, they get jail.
Ah, the injustice of it all!
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
these guys "scam the scammers" and dupe these nigerian guys into performing ridiculous tricks like photographing themselves with a fish on their head to "finalize the transaction." it's some good clean/humorous retaliation against the nigerian scams.
sean