Exiled Nigerian Prince to the Rescue

This is probably tasteless, but I get so many e-mail spams, scams, and phishing attempts, that I thought it would be fun to turn the tables on the spammers, scammers, and phishers, by publishing their emails and a not-so-helpful reply based on other spams, scams, and phishing attempts I get in the same period of time.

Click on the following link to see the current status of the Exiled Nigerian Prince’s efforts to help the downtrodden and disadvantaged, as well as his attempts to elude capture by the folks who drove him out of power and wonder where the country’s treasury went.

http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202

Paul

About Paul

Paul Race has been writing and playing all kinds of music since the 1960s, though he tends to favor acoustic and traditional songs. He has created resources like CreekDontRise.com, ClassicTrainSongs.com, and SchoolOfTheRock.com to help other musicians get a good start on their own journeys.

15 Comments

  1. If you have already start following the ENP’s adventures, you might appreciate knowing that he is still on his whirlwind tour of Central America, spreading promises of wealth wherever he goes. In this channel, he only lies to people who lied to us first. πŸ™‚

  2. BTW, the reason I started the humor thread was to respond to scam with scam, pretending to hook up folks who offered me services I didn’t need (and they really couldn’t supply), with the Exiled Nigerian Prince, who would pay them generously for their services if they would send him their bank account number and routing code. As a webmaster, the vast majority of these scams I get are offering to get my web pages onto the first page of Google’s results for all relevant searches. Of course, they only offer to do that for my web pages that are ALREADY on the first page of Google’s results for all relevant searches.

    Now here’s the crowning irony – both the humor thread (http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202) and the fake Exiled Nigerian Prince contact page (http://creekdontrise.com/enp.htm) are now on the first Google results page for “exiled Nigerian Prince.” I guess it works!

  3. Now what we’re up to something like 1400 hits on the Exiled Nigerian Prince thread, I thought I’d register the domain name ExiledNigerianPrince.com to keep someone else from doing it and capitalizing on our hard work (that’s actually happened on some of my “serious” sites). Then REAL (if third-rate) web site developers started contacting me asking if I would hire them to “flesh out” the web site, and graphic designers started contacting me to see if I wanted to have them design a logo for the ENP. Apparently there is no end to the supply of clueless people in the world.

    I haven’t been able to stop laughing long enough to reply to those folks but I have started posting ENP cartoons and memes in the thread.

    We also discovered an artist who managed to avoid a related scam who was so intrigued by the entire history of the ENP scams that he made a fake “Save the Prince” poster. We now feature that on our “contact page.” ( http://creekdontrise.com/enp.htm )

    If you haven’t been following the original ENP thread on the Creek Don’t Rise page, you can start here:

    http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202

    And as a P.S. when I went out to my admin page to approve this message, I had several spams from fake SEO boosters promising to do wonderful things for THIS web page ( http://www.paulracemusic.com )

    Spam – the gift that keeps on giving.

  4. Followers of the Exiled Nigerian Prince’s adventures will be pleased to know that he has survived another narrow escape, but is still in some danger as he tries to reinfiltrate Guatemala, this time WITH the money and WITHOUT the bounty hunters.
    If you haven’t been following his adventures, you can get started now by clicking on the following link:
    http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202

  5. Now that the Exiled Nigerian Prince forum page and fake contact page are numbers 4 and 2, respectively, on the Google search results page for “Exiled Nigerian Prince” (without quotes), I am getting DELUGED by fake SEO companies offering to get the ENP’s page on the first page of Google. Unfortunately for the forum storyline, the scammers have all stolen the same list of “reasons for poor Google rankings” from each other, so I can go through dozens of scam e-mails without seeing one that I haven’t already skewered in the forum. You can probably hear my sigh of relief when something REALLY flaky comes my way, like a fellow claiming to be JERRY LEWIS (in all caps).

    By the way, if you’re really from Belize, Guatemala, Nigeria, or any of the other countries the ENP has encountered, I apologize for any content that may seem demeaning. Maybe we should let the ENP get to this country and travel from, say, Texas to NYC on his quest for rehabilitation and liquidity. But there is nothing funny about what’s going on in this country today.

    The interesting thing is that over Thanksgiving vacation alone, the forum containing the ENP’s story gained 1500 hits.

    Yes, I know that a certain amount of those “hits” are from me going in to add posts or make corrections, and another fraction is from Google “robots” and similar code strings looking for content to help index their sites. Between me and the bots, about 750 of those “hits” are NOT really human readers following the ENPs adventures. But with today’s total hit count reaching over 4,000, that means that over 3,250 of them ARE

    The hit count (“views”) goes up every time someone clicks on a page. Doing the math, there are currently 10 pages in the thread. If every reader who logged on read every post, that means that about 325 readers have read the series from beginning to end. More likely there are several times that number of individual readers, and only a handful have read every post. Either way, that’s not a bad following for something that started as a gag, and still is, though we’re running out of source material.

    Please don’t take that as a hint that I need to start getting more spams, so I have more to work with πŸ™‚

    I have asked a couple academics who participate regularly in “popular culture” seminars and the like if the “serialized discussion forum” could be considered a new kind of literature, and they didn’t take me seriously. Considering that their peers study things like “Bazooka Joe” comics, I don’t think I deserved their disdain. πŸ™‚

    More to come. In the meantime, please have a great holiday season,

    Paul

  6. The ENP thread is now entering a new phase, because a whole bunch of “new” scammers now believe my blogs (the ones you see when you click “blogs” at the top of the page) have become popular enough to deserve “comment scamming.” That’s when scammers use the “post comment” feature you see below each article or comment to add something that links to a malicious web page. So for example, they might reply to this comment with a comment like “Learn the Halo hacks that even the pros overlook,” or “This Swedish secret will give you the best sex ever,” with a link to a web page that will seize your computer and inject so many viruses so many places that nothing short of a clean wipe of your hard drive will sort it out. Their hope is that I will accidentally click on the toxic URL, or best-case-scenario, fall for their scam and approve the comment so that all my readers click on the toxic URL. I don’t fall for their scams, of course, and their posts never show up on my web pages, but that doesn’t keep them from trying again and again. Consequently, starting about page 10 of the Exiled Nigerian Prince thread, we have several responses to attempts to “comment-scam” various blogs on this site.

    I suppose I should be upset that the attacks on the integrity of my web pages have risen to a new level. But as a rule, these folks won’t bother trying to scam/spam a forum or blog that isn’t getting a certain level of legitimate traffic. So I take their increased efforts as a positive indicator.

    Plus the other scams were getting so repetitive, it’s nice to have some new material for the ENP thread to work with.

    Have a great holiday season, all!

  7. The Exiled Nigerian Prince Thread just passed 5,000 hits, which, when you subtract the robots and my own entries and maintenance suggests that 400 folks are reading the whole thread or 4,000 folks have read the first page, or – more likely – somewhere in between. Our pages are now # 2 and #3 on the Google search results page for “Exiled Nigerian Prince” (with or without quotes) Yet we’re still getting daily spams offering to put ExiledNigerianPrince.com on the first page of Google if we will just give them our FTP passwords and credit card number. Plus I broke my rule about posting fake appeals for Christmas help to include one whose writer claims she had the money put back but mice had eaten off the corners of the bills so the bank wouldn’t take them. Gotta Love ’em! If you haven’t been following, the adventures of the Exiled Nigerian Prince in Scamland start here: http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202

  8. BTW, the Exiled Nigerian Prince, trying to sneak into America by playing djembe in a cruise ship musical production, was just drafted to check out an uncharted island for the company, and discovered the remains of some sort of amusement park, as well as large scaled creatures who keep picking off his companions one by one. Thought you should know. πŸ™‚

    http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202

  9. The Exiled Nigerian Prince forum now has over 6000 hits. So either people think it’s funny or they think they are witnessing a complete mental breakdown and can’t help watching out of sheer morbid interest. πŸ™‚

    In the meantime, the Prince’s landing party, stranded on a dinosaur-riddled tropical island has been joined by his (literally shipwrecked) romantic interest, and a drug dealer’s crew looking for revenge against the prince, also stranded after a helicopter accident. Will they get off the island? Will the Prince survive his next encounter with the drug dealer? Will anyone ever understand the plot of “Three Days of the Condor”? Stay tuned!

    http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202

  10. Talk about life imitating art. We started the ExiledNigerianPrince thread to poke fun at some of the hundreds of scams and spams we get every week.

    After making fun of fake SEOs and web site builders for months, we registered the name ExiledNigerianPrince.com just to keep someone else from capitalizing on our hard work. Then we were immediately inundated by REAL web development companies lining up to develop a web site for the Exiled Nigerian Prince.

    A few days ago, the totally fictitious Exiled Nigerian Prince supposedly donated money to relief work in Haiti and expressed hopes that he wouldn’t start being scammed by fake charities. Two days later, a real-world organization contacted us with false claims and photos of schools they were supposedly building in Haiti.

    If you have trouble getting through the early chapters, think of it like Dr. Who – you don’t miss anything by skipping ahead. The Exiled Nigerian Prince’s experience on the island of the dinosaurs starts toward the end of page 11 ( http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202&start=100 ). The story of Le Gross Prince’s escape from Haiti and journey around the Caribbean on a raft starts in page 16 ( http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202&start=150 ). If one of these stories doesn’t have you on the floor laughing at some point, the other will. Just remember, these stories are FICTION. Not everybody seems to make that distinction.

  11. Today (Jan 27, 2016) is the day we go over 7,000 hits on the Exiled Nigerian Prince thread. Admittedly, about 1000 of those hits are either robots or my own new articles and maintenance. So, doing the math, either 353 people have read all the way through, or 6,000 people have read one page each or somewhere in between. If you burn out on the third page or so, you should know that it’s like “Dr. Who,” you don’t HAVE to start from the beginning to enjoy individual episodes. Somewhere around page 11 we start an adventure in which the Exiled Nigerian Prince and a few of his fellow crew members find themselves stranded on an island that was a former amusement park now populated by dinosaurs. If that wasn’t enough, they are soon joined by a drug kingpin who has been hunting the ENP for months, and a gang of Russian mobsters he once scammed accidentally. If you start this story, stick around for his escape. Somewhere around page 16, he starts a raft journey visiting small islands reminiscent of the small planets once visited by another fictitious prince. I had to stop at the end of that adventure for a few days, but I’ll pick up again next week if I get a chance.

  12. April 20, 2016, we go over 10,000 hits for the Exiled Nigerian Prince forum pages. http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202

    Either 500 people have read all 20 pages, or 10,000 people have read one page each or somewhere in between. Not bad for a series of posts that started out as a “con the con” joke. I’m thinking that “Exiled Nigerian Prince, the Musical” should be next!

  13. As of June 18, we will have over 12,000 hits for the ExiledNigerianPrince forum page. http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202

    The totally fictitious ENP has gone around Cape Horn, crossed Central America, angered drug kingpins, helped a bounty hunter start a profitable coffee business, been stranded on an island populated by dinosaurs, jumped ship in Haiti (where he acquired the nickname Le Gross Prince) island-hopped throughout the Gulf, where he met many classic characters (similar to the Petit Prince’s adventures). rescued a Guatemalan family, visited Havana (where he was NOT “rendered” to Gitmo, no matter what the tabloids say), escaped Cuba with a stowaway refugee family, reached Biloxi, and traveled with an alligator poacher to New Orleans, where he is currently staying in a fleabag hotel. Other than that, he has had a relatively calm journey.

    Like Dr. Who, you can pretty well start anywhere in the series of adventures. . . . . .

    Of course, a black foreigner traveling across the deep south during a presidential campaign where xenophobes, bigots, and haters of all kinds have felt safe to “come out of the closet” won’t get into TOO much trouble!

  14. Ooops, I spoke too soon. turns out that having bought a boat to go up the Mississippi and being befriended by a local “wild-child” called “Shucks,” the Prince has found his boat more or less hijacked by two white politicos who seem to think that the Prince and Shucks owe them some sort of deference. How will our protagonists fare under the decidedly erratic hand of the “King” and the “Duke,” as their erstwhile “underlings” have taken to calling them? Check out the links and see. . . . http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202&start=230

  15. We just went over 15,000 reader “hits” on the Exiled Nigerian Prince to the Rescue thread on our CreekDontRise.com page. ( http://creekdontrise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=202 ). We are up to 26 pages, which is to say that either 15,000 people have read one page each, or 577 people have read the whole thing or something in between.

    I started this thread as a way of exposing scammers and spammers with humor, by pretending to urge them to contact the Exiled Nigerian Prince to help them with whatever they were writing me about. (I get about 100 scam/spam emails a day, so I just choose the juiciest ones). So if you go in on any page, you’ll discover my fake responses to various real e-mails I got that day. Gradually, the Exiled Nigerian Prince started posting, too, as did several other characters I invented. So there is a picaresque, if largely disjointed narrative connecting the posts. I’ve also borrowed themes and situations from actual works of literature for some of the Prince’s adventures, including The Little Prince (starting around page 16) and, currently, Huckleberry Finn, complete with the King and the Duke (starting around page 25). Several Jurassic Park references and a few Lost references got in there, too (starting around page 11), when the Prince and his companions were stranded on a mysterious island for a time.

    Like Dr. Who, the adventures are disjointed enough that you don’t have to read every chapter to get the “drift” of each. And you may get offended in a few sections when I call liars and demagogues liars and demagogues. That’s okay, I wouldn’t want anyone liking me or my music or anything else I do under false pretenses, just because I play banjo.

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