AA419 Tools

AA419 Tools

Send Abuse Complaints to Hosters

This is the bread and butter of the artists' work -- writing abuse complaints. We have a better than 90% success rate with just a well-written letter to web hosting companies.

Please note that the abuse desks might not even know that their company is hosting Web sites of criminals.

The most important rules:

• Be accurate
• Be polite
• Be persistent

If you don't want to write your own letters from scratch, then feel free to include our pre-written evidence lists! You could either use our pre-written complaint letters, or compose your own. A copy of fake bank abuse complaints should go to fakebanks@aa419org. This will count how many people have sent complaints. (This puts extra pressure on service providers, as they know they can't deny receiving thousands of e-mails.)

Please use our sample emails.

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Bandwidth Attack

The 419 Flash Mob is an organized bandwidth attack against the web sites of these criminals. People from around the world download images from these fake sites again and again. It's a mass visit to their web sites.

Either they will reach their bandwidth limit or the admins will notice the traffic and close the offending web sites.

The bandwidth tools below will do all the work for you! Just choose one: you can minimize the window and let it run all day long. The whole time these run on your machine, you are stealing bandwidth from the scammers.

Muguito - Discontinued

Muguito is our primary bandwidth hogging tool. Written 100% in Java, this tool is entirely is OS-independent - whether you prefer Microsoft Windows, Unix/Linux, Mac or anything exotic with Java support, you can run Muguito.

Recommended for users at any connection speed!

Features:

• Complete control over how much of your bandwidth you use. Can be paused.
• Uses less of your resources (CPU/Memory).
• Shows individual and global statistics.
• Reports progress back to aa419.org so we can see the progress!
• Detects when an image can't be reloaded any more and disables it: No more hammering of dead servers.

Bugs and problems can be reported in our forum.

For a more detailed explanation about how this tool works, see the Muguito users' manual.

The Lad Vampire - Discontinued

This page images from targeted fake banks again and again and again and again... This page is online 24 / 7 and it is recomended by the artists against 419! Recommended for users on a slow connection!

Features:

• See all those lovely graphics that lad banks love to use. (It's art!)
• No need to disable your browser cache.
• Gives all stats freaks something to look at (Wow, 419 images already!)
• Can be used as a download speed indicator.
• Detects when an image can't be reloaded any more and disables it: No more hammering of dead servers.
• Can be paused for those moments when you'd rather surf the net.
• New recently: Track stats between sessions and reboots with cookies.
• New recently: See how many other people are running the Vampire with you.

Known Bugs/Issues/Limitations:

• Requires JavaScript

The Mugu Marauder - Discontinued

MM, the predecessor of Muguito has been discontinued. We highly recommend moving to Muguito. (Download has been made unavailable as of 01 Feb 2007)

Refi Retaliator II - Fake Bank Form Filler

One of our members, SpamSlayer, the actual originator of the Lad Vampire has recently came up with the Refi Retaliator II, a Fake Bank Form Filler, also discussed in our forum, that is designed to generate information indistinguishable from legitimate leads as for polluting spammers' lead databases.

SpamSlayer writes about RR II:

The information it generates is indistinguishable from a legitimate lead unless the scammer actually calls the fake telephone number provided, or tries to email the fake email address provided... if you pollute a scammer's leads database with realistic looking leads, they'll quickly discover that culling the legitimate leads from the bogus ones is an exercise in futility. They're then forced to dump ALL the leads, bogus and legitimate.

Lead validation can be a very time-consuming task.

We've used it against HGH spammers and penis pill spammers.

How this tool can be used against 419 fake banks is currently being discussed. For all what we know, it has made the life of a major scammer, Alex Polyakov so miserable, that he actually called SpamSlayer on phone as to beg him to stop using this tool against him. We're providing a link to the phone call recording for a cheer-up: Audio recording of the phone call Alex Polyakov-SpamSlayer

As the phone call is rather noisy and indistinct for most of Polyakov's part, we've started a page dedicated to the transcript of it. Please join in and help us documenting what Polyakov, this disgrace to humanity was yammering for some 15 minutes!

Report the criminals to the legal authorities!

If you witness a crime, it is your civic duty to report the crime to the police. Let's help them to put the scammers behind bars!

Ask them to urge the web hosting companies who continue to allow these scammers to work taking money from innocent people to shut down all fake web sites! Tell them about the Database of 419 fake bank and other fraudulent web sites.

Authorities in the United Kingdom

If you are concerned that reporting a crime to the police might put yourself in danger or in any risk, you can call Crimestoppers on (+44) 0800 555 111. Your call is free from anywhere in the U.K.! You will not be asked your name, and you can leave your information anonymously. You can e-mail Crimestoppers at cst@crimestoppers-uk.org but remember -- your e-mail will not be anonymous.

Web site: www.crimestoppers-uk.org

Crimestoppers is the independent charity operating the freephone 0800 555 111 helping to prevent and solve crimes. The scheme allows you to give information about crimes that affect you and your local community. Because they are anonymous, meaning they don't want your name or address, no one will ever know you made the call. Your calls are not traced and you will never have to give a statement or go to court.

You could also contact the Metropolitan Police Fraud Squad: Specialist Crime OCU Fraud Squad

Web site: www.met.police.uk/fraudalert e-mail: fraud.alert@met.police.uk

If you don't live in London you should contact your local police station.

Special Instructions for US Citizens: If you are in the United Kingdom you could also contact the US Secret Service, US Embassy, London on (+44) 020 7408 8091.

How to report them to the US authorities

You can contact the FBI to file a report through the INTERNET FRAUD COMPLAINT CENTER at Web site www.ifccfbi.gov.

Another place to contact is the NATIONAL FRAUD INFORMATION CENTER at +1-800-876-7060. You can also contact the US SECRET SERVICE FRAUD HOTLINE at +1-202-406-5572 or email 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov. You may be better off calling the number rather than emailing if you want a response. Read: How to report being scammed or an attempt to being scammed.

How to report them to the Dutch authorities

You could go to www.meldmisdaadanoniem.nl. This site works as a portal to all the various Dutch police departments. At the top you can see a link to the English version of the site. If you phone them, your anonymity is guaranteed!

Phone numbers:
from the NL: 800 7000 (free call)
other countries: +31 800 7000 (not free!)

You could also send an email to: mail@meldmisdaad.nl

How to report them to the authorities in Spain

You could contact the Central Bank of Spain, the Banco de España via email => registros.oficiales@bde.es

You may also use the following addresses of the Spanish police: sugerencias@guardiacivil.org and delitos.tecnologicos@policia.es

How to report them to the authorities in Canada

You could contact the www.phonebusters.com! Or send them an email at info@phonebusters.com! You may phone/fax them here:

• Toll Free phone line: +1-888-495-8501
• Toll Free Fax: +1-888-654-9426
• Fax: (705) 494-4008

How to report them to the authorities in South Africa

You could contact the www.saps.gov.za Or send an email to hq.commercial@saps.org.za

• Tel: (012) 393 2108
• Fax: (012) 393 1202

How to report them to the authorities in Switzerland

Fill out a report online for the Swiss Federal Police Coordination Unit for Cybercrime Control.

Shut down their email addresses

What can you do to make life difficult for the criminals? It would be good to get their e-mail accounts suspended. Their web masters used the following email addresses to register their web sites and to "catch" new victims. Ask their email providers to immediately suspend the abuser's email accounts!

• Send complaints to abuse@yahoo.com
• Send complaints to abuse@msn.com
• Send complaints to abuse@netscape.net

What else is possible?

• Our targets usually have used bogus data to register their Web sites: Write a Whois Data Problem Report to Internic. (This usually takes a long time, but can be effective against frequent "zombie" banks!)
• Send the phone and fax numbers of fake banks to your favorite 419 scammer and ask him to call you.
• Send a text message or SMS to the mobile phones #'s, which you find on fake bank sites.