tonight on "nightline," it's one of the most popular online skams a desperate plea from a friend begging you to wire them cash overseas. tonight we followed money across the globe in search of the hustlers behind the stranded traveler scam, getting unsuspected hl americans out of millions a year. >> save a money, make a mint. now holds it will key to accumulating big money. these obsessives believe, but does their theory make sense? and smoking hot barbecue.

it's time for jumbo wings and juicy glazed ribs and one famous harley riding barbecue guru shoes us how it's really done. this is "nightline," july 13, 2012. good evening. tonight it's one of the most wide-spread scams in the world of cyber crime. raking in millions of each year. you receive an e-mail that looks like a cry from help from a friend who has been rob rd on vacation overseas, but it's really a hacker looking to cash in. well, when one of these e-mails ended up inbox of a "nightline" producer, she and abc's consumer correspondent elizabeth decided to follow the money and "nightline" investigates. >> reporter: hi. just writing to let you know my trip to the philippines with my

family has been a mess. >> the e-mail came from 10,000 mimes away, pleading for help and money. >> it has been an awful experience. i was hit at the back of any neck with a club. >> it landed in our producer's inbox a few weeks ago and she suspected it was one of the most popular online cons going these days. one the fbi says costs americans millions of dollars a year. it's called the stranded traveler scam. >> i need you to loan my some lun. i will give it back to you as soon as i get home. >> our producer, sally, decided to play along. >> okay. don't worry. i think i can come up with a few hundred, at least. >> and see if it would lead us to the hustler preying on unsuspected victims. very upse people can do tho. >> this is susan.

it was her e-mail the con man had hacked. he used her contact list to send out the plea for nearly $2,000, pretending he was susan. >> it's really dishartening to think that people are that money hungry that they'll send it out to whoever -- whoever they think they can get the most money out of. >> susan's son told us every contact, hundreds of people received the same alarming message we did. her friends mary black well sent $300 before learning it was scam. >> what? i mean, i went through the roof. i was so upset. not because i sent the money or anything like that but it was because my heart was broken for susan. >> the person pretending to be susan told us he was traveling with somebody named richard and to wire the money to richard in the philippines. >> do you know susan in california? >> no, driveway not.

the bad guys are claiming that you and the susan are over in the philippines together. that could get you in some. >> interest my wife especially. >> we tracked down the real richard, a professor in virginia. his e-mail had been hijacked the same day and friends were worried. >> processor, this is jamie. i received an e-mail from your yahoo account saying you were mug and hit. please let me know you're fine. >> the hackers managed to block richard's access to his own address book so he had no way to alert friends. >> i had had 436 contacts in my address book. none of which were now available to me. everything was lost. >> back online, instead of sending nearly $2,000, we sent 20, via western union. >> within hours he wrote back and had the nerve to complain. >> you should have told me you

never had any money. >> but he had a helpful suggestion. >> i think you can also have the money wired with the use of your credit card. >> we followed the trail to the philippines. and alert western union agent told us a suspected scammer had come into this shop to cash in. i remembered that he had claimed money from me in the past, he said. i checked the previous photocopy of his id and compared it to the new one. same face, but different name. so you really need the space? >> next stop the fbi, secretive internet crime complaint center in west virginia, where special agent charles gave us a rare look inside. >> this is where we store all 2.4 million complaints that we receive since the beginning of the project. >> the fbi has about 150,000 stranded travelers complaints on file. the phony e-mails often feature the subject line, i am writing with tears in my eyes.

>> so very mellow dramatic crooks. >> here we have 2,600 complaints of people with tears in their eyes. >> lot of crying crooks. >> we learned that if you ignore the scammers, they can sound increasingly desperate. >> sally, talk to me. talk to me, dear. this is urgent, please. please, i beg you in the name of god. >> wire services dumped where the criminals pick up the money and law enforcement never pursues these cases. so good luck getting anything back. >> there's only so much time and so many resources that prosecutors and investigators have. >> reporter: once you fall for it, the con artist puts you on your sucker list and hits you with other scams. sure enough, our producer got new e-mails fishing for her bank account number. this time we hit the lead.

for "nightline," i'm elisabeth leamy in washington. >> the scam artist, thanks for that. just ahead, it's the latest get-rich quick scheme and the secret ingredient, you probably have some of it lying around. >> announcer: abc news "nightline" brought to you by progressive. yep. the longer you stay with us, the more you save. and when you switch from another company to us, we even reward you for the time you spent there. genius. yeah, genius. you guys must have your own loyalty program, right? well, we have something. show her, tom. huh? you should see november! oh, yeah? giving you more. now that's progressive. call or click today.

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"nightline" continues from new york city with terry moran. i don't need to tell you jobs are scarce, sales are sluggish, there's no doubt the u.s. in a slump for the third year in row. but meanwhile, many americans continue to find ways to make a buck. tonight the latest example. a solution, collecting in jars, hiding in couches here is abc's kneel karlinsky with a presentation. >> reporter: got any pennies today? >> all right. we would like to buy a bag from you. >> okay. >> you hardly need a penny for joe henry's thoughts. he's on a first-name basis with bank tellers across his hometown in oregon, skouerring 15 banks a week, with one thing on his mind, pennies.

buying some, changing others back in for cash. it all seems weird, but he's no collector and he's not alone. he's known as a penny horder. from the orange tubs that hold 200,000 pennies in a shed next to his house to the hours spent sorting through roll after roll, it's no joke he's into pennies. not just any pennies only those from 1982 or earlier, because those pennies aren't just fair change, they're made of copper. get this a cop per penny is worth more than a penny, it's worth 2.4 cents. >> the copper has such a different sound. real money has a definite sound of money. if you listen to a modern sink penny, they don't sound the same. >> here is the thing about copper. its price has been skyrocketing. look at this chart from the last

few years. it has led to some unusual crime sprees. stripping the copper wiring from a phone and utility cables, from construction sites, even this 122-year-old copper bell stolen from a san francisco cathedral. in san diego, so much copper wiring stolen from eight different city parks that soccer teams can't practice because the lights stopped working mp penny horders aren't thieves. take a look at ebay find a slew of lists for pennies in bulk. here is the amazing part, lists like this for 10 dollars in pennies being sold for 20 dollars. >> if you think only a sucker would pay two cents for a penny, you're missing out on a business opportunity that the guy by the name of adam young has perfected. >> approximately $100 is in this box. >> it doesn't cost $100 to buy that. how much does someone pay you?

>> for them it's about $176 just for this box. >> people are paying you $176 for $100 in pennies? >> yes. he run aspenny operation, locked inside a secured facility. he ships to clients in every state and works in pennies by the ton. he has big money clients storing huge sacks of pennies and inquiries from hedge funds. >> what kind of money are we talking about? how much are you holding. >> just in face about about $270,000. >> in pennies here? >> yes. >> in bags like this? >> in bags like this. that's just the face value. that's not the copper value. the copper value is about three times that much. >> you can't stop smiling. >> no. >> he separates copper pennies from the chump change t newer ones that are only worth a cent. but in the weird world of penny hording, getting to the cop ser

a very big problem. it's illegal to melt pennies. just in case you were thinking of taking them to another country to turn your pocket change into cop e there's a law that makes it illegal to transport more than $5 in pennies out of the country. really. of course the penny horders know this but they know something else too, in what could be the biggest legislation to hit the u.s. mint in 50 years, officials are now looking at the composition of pennies and nickels and considering an overhaul. >> so if they get rid of the penny, then you can melt your pennies. >> that's right. >> then are you a wealthy man? >> yes, sir. >> which is why joe henry's penny collection will only get bigger. he even has $500 home counting machine to separate the copper once. >> you put a penny in here as a sample one, when the penny drops through, it decides if it's zing or copper. >> to be sure, penny horders are

another breed burks that doesn't mean they're wrong. >> if i had enron stock, it's worth nothing. these are still worth a penny. so it might seem odd or strange, but they're worth at least a penny and maybe someday a lot more. >> if the laws changed, a penny saved many times over could be a whole lot earned. i'm kneel karlinsky for "nightline" in portland, oregon. >> pennies from neil carlinky. thanks for that. a harley riding barbecue master shows us how to grill up some juicy jumbo wings.

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how do you become a barbecue legend? well for chef john, it started with his harley to feed hungry guys at biker rally. he opened up a joint called dinosaur barbecue. we went to ask him to whip up a few of his favorites. >> i would say my mother taught me how to cook. my father taught me how to drink and fight. it's a perfect blend of irish and ieal within. >> we'll make korean styled

chicken wings. we'll start with seasoning and jumbo roaster wings. we'll take the rub and toss the wings just like this. what you're looking for, just make sure each wing is covered. we're going to lay this down. we're going to close this grill. it's going to be about 45 minutes, maybe an hour for these chicken wings to be done. >> i wasn't doing anything worthwhile at that point for a living. so i seen this opportunity to get in the business of feeding bikers. we caught 55 gallon drum in half and opened -- that's how we started. we put too much chicken on the grill and it all caught fire. it wasn't a good experience t first one. it was trial by fire, literally. my chicken was on fire. so to make this korean glaze, we start with soy sauce, little bit of hoizen sauce. >> there wasn't any cook shows in 1983. there was no cook books on

barbecue. it was a regional thing. so i thought barbecue back in that day was cooking a steak, hamburgers, that was my definition of barbecue. it wasn't until i cracked the mason dixon line, that i realized what i was doing was not real barbecue. believe me, they told me. >> take a little of that korean sauce. finish it with some toasted sesame, and that is some mighty fine chicken wings. >> the day i die is the day i stop learning about barbecue. >> we'll use some raman moe crust. little bit of olive oil. you make a rub of kosher salt, smoked paprika and season the corn with that. and right on the grill.

what we have here is a st. louis cut of ribs. we rubbed it, smoked this for four and a half to five hours and it's finished. then we just give it a little bit of glaze of our sauce and we cut it. now, that's a beautiful rib. so this corn is done. you see how it's popped? perfect. little more seasoning. then you roll it around in the cheese. we have some barbecue ribs. we have some grilled corn with smoked paprika and romano, little bit of corn bred and coleslaw, it's one of my favorite dishes. >> one truly american kwi seen. it's big hunks of meet. it's comradery. it's a good time. what's not to love? >> makes me glad i'm not a