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.

Comments

It's not a scam

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a voluntary tax on stupidity.

Re:It's not a scam

[Leroy_Brown242]

It's right up there with the lottery.

Re:It's not a scam

[MoonBuggy]

I completely agree. 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. Why does nobody ever point out this side of the story? It's always like the victim was an innocent bystander, not a greedy moron.

Re:It's not a scam

[Dan Crash]

"The guy deserved to get scammed! Stupid people should suffer."

Ah, the spirit of Christmas on Slashdot.

Re:It's not a scam

[Khomar]

We should be careful when we attack people like this. Did he make a huge mistake? Yes. Was the mistake a result of caving into greed? Yes. However, millions of Americans are currently putting themselves into similar situations by getting deeper and deeper into debt by taking loans to buy luxury items: a new yacht, a larger house, a fancy new car, etc. The evils of debt and the mounting interest costs is well documented, but it happens time and time again.

While you may not have fallen victim to this particular scheme, are you certain that you have not fallen victim to the "must-have" commercialization scheme so prevalent (and legal) today? Yes, this was a very stupid mistake, but we are all just as capable of making equally stupid mistakes (an investment in the next Enron perhaps).

Do not be so quick to judge and save a little room for compassion. If nothing else, think of his wife who has lost so much and may have had little to say in the decision. Consider the difficulties that they will both face in their marriage as they approach their final years in poverty. This is a heartbreaking story. Do not become so cynical that we lose sight of this.

Re:It's not a scam

[harlows_monkeys]

It's right up there with the lottery

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)

Re:It's not a scam

[stonecypher]

However, millions of Americans are currently putting themselves into similar situations by getting deeper and deeper into debt by taking loans to buy luxury items: a new yacht, a larger house, a fancy new car, etc. The evils of debt and the mounting interest costs is well documented, but it happens time and time again.

We're not laughing at this dumbass for getting into debt. We're laughing at him for spending three times his monetary worth on something that police had already told him was fake.

While you may not have fallen victim to this particular scheme, are you certain that you have not fallen victim to the "must-have" commercialization scheme so prevalent (and legal) today?

Not to the tune of a third of a million dollars, not once the police had told me not to, and certainly not to sixteen credit cards, two sold cars and a doubly mortgaged house.

I do feel a bit dumb about my $50 electric razor. That's maybe a different caliber of dumb.

but we are all just as capable of making equally stupid mistakes (an investment in the next Enron perhaps).

Did the police tell you not to invest in Enron? Did you hear about Enron via email? Did you invest triple the amount of money you actually had, risking corporate funds loaned to you, on Enron?

If nothing else, think of his wife who has lost so much and may have had little to say in the decision.

I'm not laughing at her. I feel awful for her.

This is a heartbreaking story. Do not become so cynical that we lose sight of this.

Heartbreaking, yes. Uproariously funny, yes. I wouldn't think it was funny if he hadn't been specifically told by the fucking authorities.

Re:It's not a scam

[Lemmy Caution]

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.

Simply Insane

[OS24Ever]

This is just simply greed run amuck. Not by the scammer - but by the idiot who fell for it.

I can't feel sorry for this guy in the slightest. This guy was a whole lot of stupid. Just insane to fall for something like that and need to spend $320K to get it.

There is a certain personaility type that has to fall for this no matter where it was from. It's not the internet that has caused this, it's just helped people find more idiots to suck in.

Re:Simply Insane

[OS24Ever]

I read the article start to finish prior to posting my comment. The guy is so stubborn and stupid to think that the government of the country is keeping him from his millions, not his friends.

He's an idiot, plain and simple. When given documentation showing it's a scam he won't admit it, and won't even file an official complaint. He's a moron.

He lost everything, yep. He's now a burden on society as a whole completely because he will loose his home, bankrupt off his debt and now the banking & mortgage industries will take the hit for it causing interest rates, and credit ratings to be just that much tighter for us non-greedy types to get a loan and/or credit card.

The banking industry let him get *21* credit cards and cash advance all of them and no one blinked. They started blinking when they didn't get their payments though. That could be the only thing that might need to be fixed, the ability for a person to get *that* many credit cards in such a short time, and for no one to notice.

Re:Simply Insane

[Anonymous Cow herd]

Empathy? If you took all your money and flushed it down the toilet, do you deserve empathy? If you decide it'd be a neat idea to deliberately drive a 6" spike through your shin bone, do you think you're going to get a lot of sympathy?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for empathy... if unexpected medical bills had cleaned out his nest egg, or he'd lost it in some Enron-type pension plan raiding, I'd be Mister Empathy himself.

But the long and short of the story is that he got greedy, he didn't listen to advice from good sources. Jesus Christ, he handed over $300,000 to these guys without even doing any due dilligence. And now he's in denial. This guy deserves everything he got, end of story.

somebody should direct him to

[JeanBaptiste]

This site.... that should convince him he was scammed...

Golden rule

[msgmonkey]

If it sounds to good to be true it most probably is. period.

I dont know who came up with that line but it holds true time and again.

For the love of...

[fluxrad]

"His trip to financial ruin began Feb. 2, 2002."

Mr. Sessions, meet P.T. Barnum. Mr. Barnum, please smack Mr. Sessions as hard as you can upside the head.

Ouch..

[MattC413]

I can see why he won't admit to having been scammed, and keeps denying that those people were scammers.

At that age and point in my life, if I were to admit that I were completely scammed out of everything I had worked for my entire life because of a scam that has been around for decades, it would probably make me a broken man.

How long can someone that age live with a broken heart?

A new T-shirt

[attackiko]

"I sent the scammers $320,000 and all I got was this lousy carved wooden elephant and antelope"

I don't think he is a scammer

[andy666]

i helped him out and i made a bundle! with the money, i bought a great house with a fantastic mortgage. then i married a beautiful russian bride, and i pleasure her with my surgically enlarged, viagra driven member. During sex, I take photos and print up hundreds of copies, but hey no problem - I have an excellent source of toner....

if only

[Camel Pilot]

"I think the Lord uses people to do his work," Sessions said. "With that money, we'd be comfortable, and we could do some good things."

This statement is another way to pc package the concept of greed. If only God would let me win the loto I promise I will use it to do the Lords work - after of course making myself "comfortable".

Alive and Well

[aufecht]

This is exactly why SPAM is thriving and so widespread. Someone, somewhere will fall for anything, no matter how propostrous. A million may complain about SPAM, but it only takes one to buy into the scam. I mean, this one he should have seen a mile away and yet he lost a ton of money. Sad.

We're the one's that pay...

[k4hg]

Fine to say it is his fault, and have a good laugh at his expense, but it doesn't work out that way...

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!

Scams on the Elderly

[ChuckDivine]

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.

who uses who

[PinkyGigglebrain]

from the article

Mr.Sessions said "I think the Lord uses people to do his work,"

he forgot the devil does as well.

I fell for a scam too.

[Chainsaw Messiah]

I can sympathize with this guy. I fell for a scam too that promised to let me retire in comfort. I don't know how they got my name either. I'm still paying for it today and I'm sure the rest of my life. I'm having 7.5% deducted from every paycheck because of it. Just watch out for these scammers, this group calls themselves "Social Security". I don't know if they're from Nigeria or not though.

Re:And Worse Yet

[batura]

Uh, it is the creditors responsibility to only grant credit to those that can afford it. The fact that they gave a guy the ability to borrow 320,000 without the chance to repay it is what makes me think about who the true dumbass is in this story: the bank. The guy will file for bankruptcy next week, and they'll (the banks) will be the ones paying for thier greed.

Re:[OT] Re:It's not a scam

[aastanna]

So who's the bigger geek, you for using 2^32 as an example of a really big number, or me for knowing that 4294967296 = 2^32?

sigh