“Hold on, I’ll open another tab…”

Nigerian Banker has money he needs to get out of an account.

Setting the Scene: An astonishingly white man strides up the sidewalk in the midmorning and goes to a random suburban house. He is dressed like an out of work college student with jeans and a t-shirt that does not fit. He carries a briefcase that looks like it was put through the wash with the rest of his clothes. When he reaches the front door, he knocks.

<door opens>
<or not, the man proceeds regardless>

White Man: Good evening, sir or madam! I am a Nigerian Bank worker who is in need of assistance in securing some funds left by a recently deceased wealthy man with no will. With your help by way of monetary aid, I can bribe some officials and remove the currency from the account. You will be rewarded handsomely for your participation, to the terms of 15% the final amount. Please think of the children that I could help with all this money.

(At this point, one of three things happens)

A.

<door closes>
<or remains closed if it never opened in the first place>
<man leaves, but will return periodically to see if anyone is home>

B.

Person who answered door: No thank you, and please do not visit again.

<door closes>
<white man goes around to fellow scammers, telling them that someone lives at that house>

C.

Person who answered door: That sounds like a sound investment. Here is my credit card. Take what you need, and get back to me when you have the money.

<person waves goodbye to the white man, then closes door>
<white man maxes out credit card, returns to house>
<white man is now wearing a fitted suit>

White Man: Thank you for your help. We are much closer to retrieving the money from the account, but a judge has placed a blockade in front of us.

<white man holds up section of white picket fence stolen from the neighbor’s yard>

White Man: We could persuade him to remove the barrier, but it would require another sum of money to bribe him. I remind you that the amount of money you will receive in return will easily dwarf your investment.

<person understands, and withdraws his savings from the bank to give to the white man>
<white man hoards money, returns to house>
<white man is now driven in a limousine, steps out dressed in a tuxedo>

White Man: With your money, we have successfully removed the judge’s blockade.

<white man motions to the neighbor’s yard, where the entirety of the fence is now gone>

White Man: However, some of my colleagues has grown wise to my plans. We could remove them, but hiring people to silence them is not cheap.

<white man makes a motion suggesting the slitting of throats>

White Man: Since you have been so good in aiding this operation so far, surely you can assist just a little bit more?

<person nods grimly, takes out a second mortgage on home, and gives the money to white man>
<white man invests money in stock market>
<white man does not return to house with promised money>
<person fails to pay mortgages, goes bankrupt>
<person’s house and possessions go to auction>
<white man buys person’s house for a third of its worth>
<white man sells person’s house at full price>

<end scene>

Hey…
by Speebyenano on 07 Dec 2009, 08:25

Hi!

Am fairly new to this community and just thought it would be a good idea to introduce myself and say “hello”.

For once a solid forum with colors that I can stare at – which really is a refreshing change!

I am here to learn & get involved. How could I best contribute?

Cheers!

PS: – I am attempting to locate a long lost friend by the name of Rhett Aderholt, Where could I search for him?

Now, spambots are not uncommon on the Forums as our (old version of) PHPBB has a really weak CAPTCHA. But this was spam of a bizarre variety. No keyword or link stuffing. The user’s website was a little dubious (a spammy-looking blog pushing weight loss products), but the message posted just looked like… spam for the sake of spamming. But the part about Rhett Aderholt was totally out of place.

It’s our unofficial policy to do a little “internet detective” work whenever a new user appears on the forums. Mostly this is to quickly determine whether the account is a spambot. Speebyenano’s message appeared, with subtle variations, on a multitude of other message boards.

Users of some of the other boards on which this message appeared did similar research and went into lengthy discussions over the motivation behind this post.

The posts elsewhere had the same general idea: new user introducing himself, kind of a generic post, and then mentions his quest to find Rhett Aderholt. Sometimes the poster describes Rhett as a long-lost friend; other times Rhett is a cousin.

Rhett Aderholt, despite garnering about 36,500 Google results (and ~23,100 results for the exact phrase) at the time this article was written, remains an unknown entity, at least as far as I can tell. (I hardly dug deep.)

It does seem likely that this is a fictional person because of the noted relation inconsistency. But perhaps Rhett Aderholt was a friend of the poster and also a cousin. So I wouldn’t say it’s damning evidence of the poster being a spambot. If anything it would be the utter lack of information presented about this Rhett Aderholt that nudges my suspicion. Certainly if this poster were seeking so desperately for Rhett, there would be some kind of details to share to further the search. But the poster offers none.

Putting aside the truth of Rhett Aderholt’s existence, it remains that for one real person to register and post on so many boards, in a non-automated fashion, is virtually inconceivable. According to a poster in the thread linked earlier in this article, the number of results for “Rhett Aderholt” on or around the date of 18 Nov. 2009 was around 13,000.

Let’s do some math.

It’s now 74 days later. The number of search results is now 23,500 greater, or 10,100 greater if you assume that the search from November was for the exact phrase “Rhett Aderholt”. So there have been an average of 136 to 317 posts per day since then. If a real person is posting these, they have been posting a projected average of 7.5 to 17.6 times per hour, or once every two to ten minutes, assuming that they are awake and sitting at a computer doing nothing but posting for an average of 18 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In other words, the probability that this is legitimately from an actual person seems prodigiously low, unless someone somewhere is spending their life posting all across the internet in a half-hearted search for Rhett Aderholt.

Which brings us to a much more believable possibility about the nature of Rhett Aderholt, suggested by the same poster who noted the number of search results as previously noted.

Could this person actually be Rhett Aderholt trying to get his name up in lights, so to speak?

Is there some benefit from having your name come up thousands of times in a search engine?

Purely speculation, yes. But perhaps the most likely explanation for this phenomenon.