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Scammer Scams Scammers: Aussie Woman Rips off Nigerian Cons, Pockets Thousands

Scammer Scams Scammers: Aussie Woman Rips off Nigerian Cons, Pockets Thousands

Quick show of hands: how many Blaze readers have gotten emails from people claiming that they're Nigerian royalty and that they want to give you a million-skrillion dollars?

If you’re like us, and we know we are, your spam box is loaded with these types of offers. But wouldn’t it be funny if once (just once!) someone turned the tables and scammed the scammer?

That's precisely what one Australian woman did.

“A Brisbane woman fleeced Nigerian scam artists by stealing more than $30,000 from their internet car sales racket,” the Australian news outlet Courier Mail reports.

Sarah Jane Cochrane-Ramsey, 23, had been working as the Nigerian's "agent" since March 2010.

“Her job was to provide an Australian bank account through which they could funnel any payments they received through their dodgy account on a popular car sales website,” the Courier reports.

The deal was Cochrane-Ramsey would keep eight percent of the ill-gotten goods in her account and forward the rest to the scammers.

However, instead of sticking to the plan, she kept two payments – a total of $33,350 – to herself.

That’s not a scam. That’s a scam… (sorry, that’s the best Australian-themed joke we could come up with on such short notice)

Unfortunately, it was money that had already been stolen so, yeah, what she did was illegal. Also, according to her court hearing (told you it was illegal), she was apparently unaware of the fact that she was stealing from con men, so that takes away from the whole "poetic justice" angle.

It didn't take long for the car buyers who were getting ripped off to report it to the police, who quickly traced everything to Cochrane-Ramsey’s account.

“Police inquiries found her employers were based in Nigeria but had been using a web server in New York to run their dodgy car sales listings,” the Courier reports.

Cochrane-Ramsey pleaded guilty to one count of “aggravated fraud” (as opposed to what? "Laid-back" fraud?)

“Judge Terry Martin described her as having a ‘dishonest bent’ after hearing she had a history of stealing and property offenses,” the Courier reports. “He adjourned the sentence to allow her time to provide further details of money she claimed was in a bank account that would allow her to make some repayments.”

Cochrane-Ramsey will be sentenced next month. She is out on bail until then.

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