419 Scam Costs Britons 8.4m GBP in 2002

Albanach writes "In this article the Scotland on Sunday newspaper reports figures from the UK's National Criminal Intelligence Service which show 150 Britons were caught out by the Nigerian 419 scam and its variations in 2002, with a total loss of 8.4m GBP ($13.3m US)or around 57,000 GBP ($90,000 US) a head. "

Comments

How stupid can people be?

[osgeek]

While I heartily encourage the full prosecution of the con artists, I don't feel all that sorry for the victims.

I mean, if you're that stupid, it's probably best for society if you don't have any economic influence anyway. Your right to vote should probably be taken away as well. :P

Re:How stupid can people be?

[dattaway]

I mean, if you're that stupid...

Not to mention these people are directly supporting the spam industry and making it very lucrative. The victims so richy got what they deserved. Consider that their fine and tax for stupidity.

Re:How stupid can people be?

[nomadic]

I would feel some sympathy for them if they were merely stupid.

However, most the people who fall for it are also dishonest; in most cases they think they're bilking the Nigerian (or Botswanan or whatever) governments. Makes me feel a bit less sorry for them.

Just goes to show

[jaymzter]

You can't cheat an honest person. They weren't gullible, they were willing to lie for money.

Re:Just goes to show

[kmellis]

"You can't cheat an honest person."

Sure you can. The "Western Union" wire-transfer scam featured in Mamet's "House of Games" comes to mind. It goes like this:

The con artist goes to a Western Union outlet and sits down as if he's (she's) waiting for a wire transfer. Time passes. The mark comes in, someone who is obviously waiting for a transfer and is impatient when they find that it's not arrived. The con artist strikes up a friendly conversation with the mark. They both mention how they're waiting for a desperately needed wire transfer and they're both impatient. The con artist suddenly gets an idea. "Hey", he says, "You know what? If my wire gets here before yours does, what'll you say that I just loan you the $X you need and you can pay me back tomorrow after your transfer gets here?" The mark says, "Gosh, that's really nice of you. And I'll do the same thing for you." Since the con artist doesn't actually have money coming in, inevitably the mark gets his transfer and offers the loan to the con artist. The con artist takes it and walks away, never to be heard from again.

Now, this is only marginally plausible, but it's the example that came to my mind. Most people these days would politely refuse the offer, but some wouldn't, and some of them would gullibly offer to reciprocate.

"Mike", the con artist in "House of Games" that demonstrates this con to the psychiatrist, asks her if she know why these are called "confidence games". She responds, "Because someone gives you their confidence?" Mike says, "No. Because I give them my confidence." Which is a brilliant line and also very true.

Almost every person has some "weakness" or another that makes them vulnerable to a con artist. Often, yes, it's greed and dishonesty. But it can also be generosity, compassion, or simple confusion. And, more often than you might think, it can be arrogance or over-confidence. Some of the people here who are ridiculing all victims of a scam as being "stupid" may be vulnerable to having their overconfidence exploited. Carl Sagan (and others) wrote about how it is that scientists seem to be surprisingly easily tricked by "scientific" fraudsters (paranormalists, etc.). It's because the scientist's overconfidence is taken advantage of; that the fraudsters, like magicians, misdirect the scientist's attention to areas that they naturally focus upon and perform their slight of hand in places where the scientists aren't looking and didn't think to look. A con artist will do the same thing--set up something that looks like a scam to attract the suspicious mark's attention, then perform the real scam in a direction the mark isn't looking.

Everyone thinks they are immune to being conned. They're almost all wrong.

That said, there's almost no chance that I could be scammed by a con artist appealing to my greed. I'm automatically suspicious of any potential windfall from any source. But, on the other hand, I'm almost certainly vulnerable to a carefully crafted scam that takes advantage of generosity or compassion like the one I detail above. The only comfort I take in that is that there are more scams leveraging the mark's greed than there are that leverage other characteristics.

A classic, authoritative book on the history, psychology, and sociology of confidence artists and their cons is "The Big Con" by David Maurer.

The scam is in the transfer fees.

[wackybrit]

If you could clear out someone's account just from their account number and sort code then anyone could it.. after all, you have to swap these details to send money to each other with Internet banking.

What the article fails to point out is that these scammers don't just drain your bank account, they actually request you pay certain 'transfer fees' so that they can get the money moved across. These 'transfer fees', inevitably, are thousands of dollars. Anyone paying them is an idiot.

And that's all this is. I think those scammers deserve every red cent. THIS IS A TAX ON THE STUPID and ignorant, something we should have the state taxing, but if the Nigerians have to do it, so be it.

This is another 'tax' that, like duty on cigarettes and alcohol, doesn't affect me at all.. so I'm all for it.

(Notice how the people scammed all actually had thousands in savings.. a sign that the greedy people aren't the poor, they're the already rich)

Stupid people are everywhere

[codewolf]

Every time I hear news like this I have to remind myself that 50% of the human race is below average intelligence. Usually when I mention this to someone they say "that can't be true!" Then I know that they are one of the lower half. A fool and his money.....

Re:What did you expect?

[freestyle-fiend]

Actually, the Europeans who migrated to America were far more likely to get scurvy than Europeans who never went to sea, so those scurvy-ridden Brits are now called Americans.

Re:Some of those are quite elaborate

[MyHair]

I have received hundreds, and every one of them has been in broken english, some of the phrases are laughable at best.

Scamming is about distracting the brain away from the absurdity of the scam. It's a cleverly crafted letter, believe me. The details such as the upper case and bad spelling are distractions; the large amount of money is a distraction--either a temptation for you to steal it all or 'proof' that these people have plenty of money and don't need to scam you, depending on your type. The government employee or royal relationship, the details of why they can't get it out or why it's stuck, etc..

It's all designed to distract you and to be interpreted different ways by different personality types. Your brain throws out what's not relevant to you and rationalizes the existing information into something you can trust. The brain rationalizes the bad grammar as the fact that they are from Nigeria or that the writer is stressed from being in a hurry or from political strife and somehow that enhances the feeling of trust. In the case of the grandparent post the letter was directed more specifically, probably as a legitimate business case, and in that situation a different approach (proper spelling and grammar, correct title and name) is used to create the distractions and trust.

Some suckers see an opportunity to steal the whole bankroll; some see an 'honest' chance at getting a large fee for helping these people out (and yet somehow ignore the fact that the people are violating rules and laws in the process); and so forth.

After making contact the scammers are skilled at presenting plausible-sounding scenarios where the money they need from you decreases or increases as they find out what you're able and/or willing to pay.

I'm speaking from personal experience and not from reading or traditional schooling: I got conned once on a small time basis ($117 by two guys on the street, but I was 18 and that was all the money I had that week), and in retrospect I see all the ways I discarded some of the information they gave me and rationalized the rest, and how different people would've fallen for the same scam for different reasons; it's quite a marvel what the brain does and how scammers exploit it. In retrospect my guys tempted me with greed, good samaritanism, religion, sex and race relations (political correctness) that I can recall--there was probably more. I fell for the good samaritanism and race relations and ignored the other temptations, but once they find out what you're about they work on trust and confidentiality. The key is to build mutual trust so they can walk away with your money (literally in my case), and for you to not tell anyone else because a third party will almost always immediately see how stupid the whole thing is because they didn't go through the ridiculous brain conditioning you did to arrive at the mental state you're at.

That con was the most humiliating event in my life. At the time $117 was a lot of money but not so much that I went hungry or lost my home, but the shame and humiliation is for how I fell for something so stupid. 15 years later I can now look back on it as a cheap lesson and thank God it didn't happen later when I had more to lose, but come to think of it I've never told anyone outside the family about it until now. I was living week-to-week then; I can't imagine how people who've lost months or years of work/money would feel; probably suicidal.

It is hard to feel sorry for people who fell for the 419 scam, and even I had no sympathy for them. But now that I recall my con, you need to realize these con men are very professional and know how to twist your head off of your shoulders and make you believe anything; once you fall for the initial hook they are experts at maneuvering you to the sting.