Hilarious: Three Women Scam ISIS With Mail-Order Bride Scam

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Three young Chechen girls pulled a fast one on ISIS jihadists by swindling them for money with an essential mail-order bride scam – and now they are in police custody.

RT.com reports: The young women turned the tables on Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) by using their primary recruitment tool, social media, against them. Russia’s predominantly Muslim Chechen Republic is a prime target for Islamic State propagandists, who call on young men and women to join their cause and travel to the Middle East to become join their jihadist campaign.

But with the Chechen girls apparently the joke was on Islamic State, as they made a business of meeting recruiters online and pretending to be eager to go to Syria. The only obstacle, they said, was the lack of travel money, which the recruiters were often willing to provide. Once the money was sent via anonymous electronic transfers, the swindlers would simply cash the money and delete the social media account used in the con.

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The three-girl operation managed swindle some $3,300 from Islamic State recruiters before being caught by a Chechen police E unit specializing in monitoring online activities for evidence of crimes, Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper reported.

The Daily Beast put it best:

ISIS bride, meet Russian mail-order bride, meet classic Internet scam. A group of young Chechen women crafted a brilliant online money-making scheme, all in the name of ripping off ISIS recruiters—whom they essentially duped with the same tactics your grandparents fall for when they read their spam inbox.

The women were recently detained by local police for allegedly leading on ISIS recruiters for the cash, and then bailing on their trips to Syria, according to Russian website Life News. The young women had apparently been contacted over the Internet by jihadis, and decided to play along. They were willing to go fight, the women reportedly said, if they were given travel funds. For ISIS recruiters, who often ply their online targets with money and gifts, it was a standard request.

But the women never showed up in Syria. They had scammed the utopia-promising jihadi scammers: After the wire transfers came through, the Chechens would block the jihadi they’d been communicating with and disappear—then they’d repeat the process.