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Nigerian Scammers Claim Another Victim
A Florida newspaper ran a story yesterday about a local retiree who fell hard for a 419 scam. The story goes into depth on the methods used to play on the target's beliefs and gain his confidence - in this case, the target (who lost $320,000) is still having a hard time accepting that they were thieves. Truly remarkable.
This site.... that should convince him he was scammed...
Did you even read the article?
How can you not feel bad for this man who lost everything? There was no greed involved, only hope to do good with the money, and to keep the bills paid for a retiree.
I know most of us are cynical as hell, but egads.
http://use.perl.org
The actual premise of the transaction doesn't even sound legal. A banker needs to move money that isn't his by using an offshore account?
Yep. There's an old saying, "you can't con an honest man". Most big cons have some element of dishonesty (beyond the "getting something for nothing") because it helps to discourage the mark from checking on the legitimacy of the scenario in the first place.
-- Alastair
It always amazes me how accurate the quote about never underestimating stupidity proves to be. A mere five minutes with Google, or for the less technically inclined, call to the local police or news, reveals 90% of these scams. Check with the Better Business Bereau, look in the library news archives, so many ways to debunk snake oil like this. Heck, the old folk living here in Florida used to see these guy on street corners selling tonic.
This guy probably is a runner up for a Darwin award many times over...
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
As the article says, most of that money is in new debt. He'll never be able to pay it back, so it will become the loss of the finance companies. They will raise the interest rates we have to pay in order to recoup that money.
And of course, since the guy will lose his home and has no money, he'll have to go on welfare to get his rent and food money. He won't be able to pay for his health care co-payments any longer, so he'll bail on those bills, making his doctors and hospitals raise their rates for paying customers and insurance companies.
Yes, he was stupid, his life will be crap, but we are the ones that have to pay for his stupidity!
While the scammers should not have tried it to start with, anyone stupid enough to be taken in by something so well documented after being warned by the police deserves to loose anything they put in.
What about his wife?
It's also quite possible his mental state is somewhat deteriorated by age. It doesn't happen to some seniors, but it certainly does to others, and it's very likely they'll still have legal control of their assets for some time while in the deteriorated mental state.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
It's not all black and white. There are even some companies in the US that have a sort of queezy feel to them in regards to their offers. Pre-Paid Legal has an iffy feel to it (see News on Pre-Paid Legal. It's a MLM company which sells
That was a grey-area example, But offers which promise to make you rich while requiring no work from you are almost invariably scams. There's an easy way to detect a scam: listen to your gut. If something doesn't feel right, you shouldn't go with it.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Plenty in common there:
Greed.
True believers.
Those that get stuck with the debt.
Nobody thinks they were scammed. The leaders were just good honest men that were themselves misled. When all other justifications fail, try the old "God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform."
Don't be so quick to point the finger at the imbecile in the story -- look in the mirror first.
Fight control. Question authority. Rebel. Be free.
I'm not quick to blame the victim in this case.
My mother is 88 years old. You would not believe some of the scams that target the elderly. The ones I've seen are, surprisingly enough, quite legal. For example, selling reports on lotteries you may have won or soliciting for charities that keep practically all the money for themselves.
Some of the elderly do have difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy. Most do not. For those who do it's partly it's because of problems that happen to people who grow quite old -- and sometimes it's due to having grown up and aged in an era in which normal people were not targeted by frauds.
If the man in this story was, say 43 or 53, I'd be much harsher. But, by 73, he could be suffering from some problems that limit his ability to understand reality.
What should be done? Damned if I know for sure. But I think younger relatives should keep a close eye on their elders. That way you can limit the damage done to Mom or Granddad by this kind of scum.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
Why am I posting this here? Well, the other day, someone else that Learning Strategies failed to pay sent me the following. This came from the FBI:
It is not always clear that one is being scammed. In my case, I had been paid a nominal amount for classes I taught as an independant contractor ($435) before they offered me fulltime work. Learning Strategies owes me $4375. But, who knows if I will ever see it.If anyone has any sugestions on how to get the ball really moving on this I would greatly appreciate it. As would all of the other people who were promised salaries that never got them.
Thank you.
The lottery is occasionally in your favor, when it has gone several weeks without a winner, so the prize is very large. (Yes, that does attract more players, but not enough more to compensate for the larger prize).
The Nigerian scam is never in your favor. :-)
There is an interesting case included in income tax caselaw books, where a consortium of Australian investors tried to buy one of each possible combination for such a lottery. Buying tickets turned out to take longer than they thought, so they only got about half what they wanted, but still won most of the prizes, including all the big ones, and so made a nice profit. The case is in the books because there was some question over how to tax this.
Tax law cases are often a lot more interesting than other cases, because people put a lot more thought into avoiding taxes than they do to most other things. People who would only devote a few minutes to planning a murder will spend weeks trying to figure out how to deduct the cost of the bullets. :-) (This also makes it hard. I've got a B.S. degree in math from Caltech, and never in my life have numbers so confused as they did when we studied partnership taxation in law school)
My grandfather, a cop during your simpler time, has told me story after story about hucksters, scammers, con men, and all variety of snake oilers. He is 82, so he lived through the same times as our questionable man. His first reaction on seeing the Nigeria e-mail was to laugh. He even showed me a story from the Orlando Sentinal he had saved (don't remember the exact issue) where they busted a guy for using almost the exact same scam about funding a gold mine. So it's not even an original one.
Aside from which, said old man was warned by friends, family, even the police. No issue there of failing to spread the word. Just a gullible, greedy, old fool.
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Of course, that's just my opinion and I'm sure a lot of people have good, positive experiences with the studen loan people...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
People (including myself) have tried engaging the scammers in conversation to have some fun and possibly steer them down a dead end. However, these folks have far more time to devote than we do at creating these bogus stories.
I've also heard of people replying and attaching image files so that they're mailbox quota gets used up. Most of the scammers are using free email services so it doesn't take much to fill their quota. I;ve done this a few times, choosing suitably bizarre images (nothing pornographic, just bizarre).
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Notice that the guy assumes he can find people so stupid he can get away with calling himself Hans Berger in the text and David Beck at the end.
Or it's a tax on naivete`
In this particular elderly gentlemans' case, it is probably a combination of that, and denial. It ain't just a river in egypt, folks, and it's a powerful ego defense when you've lost it all due to your own trust, and can't face the reality of your victimhood.
Think that kind of denial can't be real? How hard do you think it is for that old fellow to look himself in the mirror and realize that his own foolishness cost he and his disabled wife their life savings and future?
Truly a sad tale.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
It may still be a pretty good deal.
... .
The real question is not the numerical amount of the winnings compared to the bet, but the value of the money in what you can do with it.
For example, assume the ticket costs $1 and the payout to a single winner is $25,000,000.
What is the real value of that $1 to you? Probably not a whole lot. It's not even a hamburger. Maybe a small coke.
That $1 is just not going to make much difference in your life.
How about $25,000,000? That can make a huge difference in your life. Even adjusting for present value and taking out taxes, you can probably still retire, open your own medium size business, pay off your bookie,
So the real value of $25,000,000 in terms of what it can potentially do for you may be much more than the strict odds on the gamble.
But considering how most people who win seem to blow the money, the value to them may be much less than would be expected.
How many of you guys sitting there feeling smug about your healthy cynicism actually believed this article absolutely, without checking a single fact, simply because it told you what you wanted to hear?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
That reminds me of a question. Might make an interesting Slashdot poll. Suppose you've won a free drawing. You have your choice of the following prizes, each of which has an expected value of $1. Which do you take?
I don't know about your grandparents, but mine aren't mentally retarded.
While it's own thing to say "my grandma doesn't know jack about how computers work", and even joke about it, saying they consider it a "magic box" powered by dragons.
But, if my grandmother is using email, I don't think she says "oh, my magic box is telling me to send my bank info over"... She understands the concept of mail, and letters.
Computers and technology had very little to do with this. Maybe sometimes people don't understand the danger of giving out their bank account and identification information, but that's a little different.
(All this being said, my grandmother might fall for this con. But that's because she's into get-rich-quick schemes (she's owned vending machines, tried "telemarket from home" schemes, raised emus in her back yard(!), etc), not because she's an idiot fooled by the "magic box powered by psychic fairies")
I should be more sympathetic? Fuck that. This guy is a criminal. He funded the bribing of officials all in an attempt to defraud a foreign goverment for nothing else then pure financial gain. Rule 1 of being a criminal be aware of bigger criminals. Oh well no doubt a lot of other idiots will help this sucker out proving to him that god exists and that it is goverments who seek to screw people over. God bless america.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That ignores the utility value of money, which acts as a coefficient to the payoff, rises and falls in a non-linear way, and reacts differently for loss than for gain.
Utility theory is also why it taxing 10% of a blue collar worker's income hurts more than taxing 50% of Bill Gates'. There's a vast difference in value between the utility of 10,000 dollars and 9,000 dollars (it may be the difference between paying rent and not having a home) and less of a relative gulf in utility between 20 billion and 40 billion dollars.
I realize that my comment isn't a direct response to the parent but this looks like as good as a place as any to point out the religious aspect of this story. Lots of people have already pointed out that this guy is greedy and stupid. But there's something else at work here as well: he believes he is better than the rest of us because he is religious. The story specifically mentioned that as soon as the scammers started making references to God, that the Mark was hooked. This is very important. If there was any question in this doofus' mind as to whether this was legit, it was dispelled by this simple reference to God.
Religion is a divisive force in our society. While I do not doubt that some people have obtained some benefitted from religion, it largely serves to label people and compartmentalize our supposed "melting pot". People are identified by their religious faith in the same manner as race and sex are used. But religion is unique in that people choose their religion. This makes them feel like they really belong and that others do not. In the mind of the devoutly religious, people are divided into the "have faith/found God" camp which is considered Good and "the other godless wretches" which are considered Bad. Religion serves a "secret society" kind of role in which members, consciously or not, consider other members to be "better" than non-members.
So what does this anti-religious tirade have to do with an internet scam? Mr. Religious Scam Victim sees an opportunity to profit handsomely from a deal that he knows very little about. Why was he chosen? Why would these people trust him? Because he's religious, of course. He's a member of The Club (also known as God's Favorite Children). He has been given this opportunity because either (a) good things happen to members of The Club because they're the Good guys in the world or (b) God has selected him for this mission. The money is about to be stolen away by some evil, nonreligous foreign government and it's up to him and the Chosen Ones to make sure it stays in the hands of the faithful. Why does he deserve this money? Because he's religous, and therefore, better than most people. In his mind, it's as simple as this.
Some people have expressed anger at this guy for being stupid. Some have expressed sympathy for him. Some have laughed at his greed while others feel pity. But there's one characteristic of his psyche that has not been called out yet. He believes that he is a better human being than people without religion. If you don't want to hate him for being stupid or greedy, then I implore you to hate him for having the arrogance to believe that he is a better person that those who do not subscribe to any religion.