OT: Scams - mainly for UK members but...

[Highmac]

...others may still find some useful info in here. No doubt your own government has a similar site.
 
 [ 02-13-2003, 02:53 AM: Message edited by: Highmac ]

[jepinto]

Where did the term "Cowboy" repair men or builders originate?  Just curious.

[Highmac]

What a good question.... our dictionaries here give the definition as "unscrupulous" or "unqualified" tradesmen - but they DON'T say how it came to be adopted. Any theories, anybody? Or at a pinch I suppose we could accept facts - Not so much fun though     .

[kelly]

"Slim Pickens" so far.  

 

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Pickens,+Slim

Found this.

"Cowboy: a rank outsider. Shaw thinks that this comes from the saying, " If yew can't fight, wur a big 'at." 
Cowboys is also a name given to a ship's crew.
Cowboys also refers to fly-by-night tradesmen who do shoddy work, take the money and disappear.
Sources: LS1, LS4, SHAW II"

http://www.louisville.edu/~tavan001/MerseytalkC.html

[taliesin]

And in the meantime, there's a new variant on the  Nigerian "419 scam", which has been mentioned here before.
I recently got a classic 419-er from South Africa, but it was followed this week by one purporting to be from Côte d'Ivoire:
"Sir, With whole confidence and belief, my thought saw your name, as a reliable person to co-operate in joint venture partnership. I am, Guei Martin, from Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) the son of General Guei Robert who died recently during the military coup d'etat. As a former Head of State My father acquired and deposited two diplomatic boxes in a private security company here in Abidjan, containing 47 million USD including Gold and Diamond..."
...and so on.
Apart from the fact that it's a rather inaccurate account of the recent and ongoing trouble in Ivory Coast, it's the conventional fraud.

And still some people persist in falling for these things!