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419 Emails From A Cultural Perspective
dasboy writes "The LA Times has an article entitled I Will Eat Your Dollars about Nigerian 419 scammers that presents some of the cultural basis for the crime. They follow some young men in Lagos who toil over computers all-day and long into the night to snag a new victim. They even have a fight song entitled 'I Go Chop Your Dollars.'" From the article: "Scammers, he said, 'have the belief that white men are stupid and greedy. They say the American guy has a good life. There's this belief that for every dollar they lose, the American government will pay them back in some way.' What makes the scams so tempting for the targets is that they promise a tantalizing escape from the mundane disappointments of life. The scams offer fabulous riches or the love of your life, but first the magha has to send a series of escalating fees and payments. In a dating scam, for instance, the fraudsters send pictures taken from modeling websites."
Then it probably is. An email from a young, great looking, hard bodied male/female who is rich and has gobs of cash to spend on *you* is probably NOT for real.
More likely is that you will find someone who has your same interests and general income level, whom you will start a relationship with and then waver in and out of interest with.
That's real life.
Of course I still buy an occasional lottery ticket.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I would have to agree that the anonymous American is a greedy fool.
Where else do you see people react to being in an accident like they won the lottery? Be it medical, car, workplace. Get hurt and bingo, how can I get paid.
Tough to admit, but deep down everyone has some greed. Greed is a survival trait. Greed doesn't apply only to money, but to status, acceptance, and a miriad other indicators be them material or immaterial.
Most scams rely heavily on the scamee forgoing rational thought to bite the lure. Nothing clouds judgement like a big payday or a supermodel.
American's are in for a rough ride when China becomes the next superpower and greed is a major reason why.
--signed "A greedy American"
Only greedy people fall for the "I have $18346205826.54 US, and I need someone to help me get it out of the country." So, how can you feel truly sorry for someone who is attempting to commit a crime and gets scammed out of his money?
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
I'm sure that the scammers have tuned their art extensively, and know a thing or two about the human psyche. However, I always wondered why they promised such huge payoffs. If someone offers me $100 million dollars in easy money, all my scam detectors go off at once. On the other hand, if someone asked me to do that same thing for $20, I would probably be more willing to go along with it.
We have a lot of cultural greed in North America, so its understandable how some other cultures would perceive us as greedy. It's too bad they don't realize that the people they scammed do not get paid back for the money they lose.
If I were stuck in a 3rd world country with corrupt governments and no legitimate way to feed myself, I'd be tempted to turn to scamming "rich" people too. And in North America, the middle class is rich compared to most of the world's population. In Canada it would take about 5 Earths* to sustain our current level of consumption. [*source: The Nature of Things from a few days ago.]
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Foo: They say the American guy has a good life.
Bar: Walk a mile in my shoes, buddy. You'll find out it ain't all peachs 'n cream.
Yeah. You've got it bad, here in America (I assume) with "the run-down, teeming streets, the grimy buildings, the broken refrigerators stacked outside, the strings of wet washing. It's the kind of place where plainclothes police prowl the streets extorting bribes, where mobs burn thieves to death for stealing a cellphone, and where some people paint "This House Is Not For Sale" in big letters on their homes, in case someone posing as the owner tries to put it on the market."
Oh, my bad. That's the description (from the FA) of the conditions of the folks who you're asking to "walk in your shoes". There's no way anyone from the US, Canada, or Europe (including myself) could even concieve of what it's like to live in such conditions with no way out.
Wrong is wrong, and the young man profiled in the article has more guts than most to see that and turn his back on it. But to completely ignore the factors behind the bad behavior is counterproductive at best. "Root causes" (of crime, poverty, terrorism, etc) may be overrated, but it's hard to defeat an enemy if you don't know his motivation.
Or maybe Slashdot dropped the [sarcasm] tag from your post...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
You can only lean on cultural relativism so much.
What I mean is, regardless of the culture you were raised in and the social climate of your environment, at some point, wrong is wrong is wrong.
In this category, I would put anything that infringes on the rights of other human beings, including murder, assault, and, yes, simple theft.
Justify it all you want. Yes, the people who fall for it are often greedy and stupid, but that doesn't make the act of the perpitrators any less wrong.
Aren't these scams just what "social justice" is supposed to be -- stealing from people because INSERT JUSTIFICATION HERE ?
Justifications:
- It's their fair share.
- They did XYZ THING in the past
- Their ancestors did XYZ THING in the distant past
- They have a different skin color than me
- They have a different religion than me
- They can afford it
- Etc.
The justifications aren't really relevant, BTW. They're just flavor. People steal/tax/defraud/embezzle/con because they want the money and because they can.
Walk a mile in my shoes, buddy. You'll find out it ain't all peachs 'n cream.
Doubtful. You most likely have a personal computer that you can call your own, or perhaps your family's. You probably eat well, have a closet full of clothes to choose from, get a free education (high school), or pay(have payed for) for a good quality education if you're in college. Chances are that you own your own car, or can use on of your families cars. Given the current US unemployment percentage (5.1%) you most likely have a job. You spend your free time on niche news websites such as slashdot. I could go on, but the point is, you (and I also fit into all of those above claims), that we have a good life compared to most the rest of the world, regardless of where we fit in on the American class system.
Now, that all being said, it is in no way an excuse for these immoral scams. Stealing is wrong no matter what and these people prey on the old and poor who are ticked into this scam. What they do is unexcusable, and their reasoning offered in the article is just that, excuses for behavoir they know is wrong.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
Kovacsics said victims can't believe that a scammer would spend months of internet chat just to net $700 or $1,000, not realizing that is big money in Nigeria and fraudsters will have many scams running at the same time. If you take that attitude, not realising money is actually worth something, I think it'd be pretty inevitable people thinking you are "greedy."
Any grammatical or spelling errors above are for comic effect, and do not signify imperfection in the writer.
I can't tell you how many times I hear about welfare fraud where someone might net a few hundred dollars a month, but these same people never once mention the corporate people who steal millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. Or corporate bosses who steal the pension plans from people who have worked hard all their careers and are left with nothing. Thank god for social security so they won't starve.
So right now we're worried about some Nigerians stealling tens of millions a year when we've got tens of billions in medical fraud going on in this country.
Get some perspective.
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
I don't know who said it, but it's the first thing I think of these days when people talk about walking a mile in someone else's shoes.
Anyhow, for the people criticizing this guy for whining, remember that this is the whole point of the "walk a mile..." saying. Everyone's life is filled with trouble. That's what life is. Some may have it better, and some may have it worse, but if you think anyone has it so good that they deserve to be hurt, then you probably don't understand what that person's life is really like.
(That's one idea, anyway)
Is the average american stupid and gullible? Let's see what Mr. Infomercial can tell us.
"Forget about diets! Forget about exercise! With the new fat-o-free efervescent pills, you can get from THIS (fat lady in picture) to THIS (supermodel)! Forget about those tight clothes (B/W scene shown)! Start your new, slim life, with fat-o-free! 1-900-IAMA-DUMB. CALL NOW! Our operators will be pleased to help you! And if you call in the next 30 minutes, you get F-R-E-E our how-to-lose-weight manual. (blinking)C-A-L-L---N-O-W!!!!!"
As I said in an earlier post, the media and commercialized culture has "educated" the american mind into believing there are easy magical solutions for all our problems, instead of investigating the problems from the root and encouraging hard work. And if material solutions don't work, then somebody must be affecting your karma (and there we go, to the next degree of scams: If it doesn't work is because you don't have faith!).
The apparition of 419 scams was just a matter of time. (Kinda brought it upon themselves, if you ask me)
Sounds like a lot of arguments we hear about the legitamacy of pirating. "They make so much money anyway," "Yeah but they screw over the artists," "It's all crap that I wouldn't have bought anyway," etc.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
If it's dead, you killed it.
It's an old truism of the con artists' trade that the best kind of mark is the person who thinks they're getting something for nothing--that they're really scamming the con artist.
This is my favorite element of the crime: taking advantage of a desire to take advantage.
Hooray for duelling dishonesty!
I love those Nigerian scams, if only because I like the fact that someone says, "I'm going to pull a fast one on this Nigerian yokel for all that money."
Much like muslim terrorists, I think it's always better to have an understanding of what's going on with the people who try to screw us over so hard, instead of just imagining them as mustachio twirling villains who are out to get us because, well, they're the bad guys.
That is the most insightful thing I have seen in a while and totally agree...
Like the UK Transit bombings when someone says "Maybe they bombed us because we have troops in Iraq?" they get shouted down as providing excuses for the Terrorists, but the fact of the matter is that people just don't wake up one morning and say "Well I am going to blow myself up today for no good reason!"
Whatever reason they may have is actually important to the situation, but I stress it is not excusable to go and murder, steal, and scam people, but if you want to defeat the enemy you must know their motives.
It is how the detective and intelligence catches these criminal... To psychologically understand who this person maybe and also recognize signs of another possible criminal.
And it irks me to no end when I see police or soldiers refer to the enemy as "the bad guys" with no respect to understanding why they do the things they do. Sure it is there job to kill or apprehend the criminal/enemy, but these people are doing it for reasons that may seem justified in their own eyes.
If you sit back and recognize these justification you might have a better chance of avoiding and preventing being scammed, assaulted, or surviving the attach when it happens.
As Sun Tzu said "Know thyself, know thy enemy and win the battle every time.". (paraphrased)
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
they wouldn't have the knowledge and resources to perpetrate the scams (e.g. speaking English and having enough money for Internet access)
Considering that English is Nigeria's official language, I don't think English speaking skills is necessarily a good metric with which to judge the education of Nigerians.
You may have a valid point about Internet access, though.
People don't like to acknowledge these kinds of arguments because they seem to say that people are influenced by their environment, instead of acting with perfect free will, where every decision comes entirely from the individual will and is unaffected by reality.
If this kind of argument was true, then maybe there is no real merit in making good decisions. You didn't make the right decisions because you are good, smart and hard working, you made those decisions because of circumstances beyond your control. Most people's ego is based on a sense of worth stemming from their beliefs in their own correct life choices. If choices are determined by environment, the entire sense of ego and self worth disappears.
People also don't like even the hint that there might be a reason for bad behavior. The reason is because those are bad people. Bad people should be punished. End of story. Simply saying, "they might have done that bad thing because of poverty, or inequality, or whatnot" is like saying, "not only are they not fully to blame, but you may be partly to blame for contributing to an environment that makes their bad behavior unavoidable." No one likes to hear that.
This mindset is so prevalent that it discourages most people from ever using their brains to look honestly at the patterns and cycles that lead to negative behavior. Couple this with the fact that many people (police, politicians, etc.) indirectly profit from the bad behavior of others, and you can see why these bad behaviors persist.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
One of the first things you must do to hurt strangers is to dehumanize them, war propaganda is a classic example of this. Anti-abortionists portray pro-choice folks as "baby murderers", Muslim extremists portray all Westerners as "immoral perverted satanists", Iraqi insurgents are all "freedom hating terrorists", etc. Serial killers are notorious for referring to their victims as "things".
These conmen in Nigeria can work without bothering their consciences by just dismissing Americans as gullible and rich fools who deserve to be ripped off. Maybe if they saw how real the damage was that they inflicted on the desperate some of them might think twice. The ones without consciences, lock 'em up.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
A soldier's job is to do what he/she's told, not what they think is right.
This is a good recipe for genocide.
...is how someone who was dumb enough to cough up $200,000 to a scammer was smart enough to have accumulated $200,000 (or maneuvered themselves into a position to get their hands on that much) to begin with.
Perhaps it was some naive person squandering an inheritence. That's the only scenario that even begins to make sense.
Call me names if it makes you feel better about your point of view.
I do not and did not mean to imply that the U.S. is at the same level as Haiti or Nigeria or any other third world county. The U.S. is a land of plenty and is extremely rich in comparison. But that does not mean we do not have our fair share of people at the bottom.
Yes, ****YOU**** probably could work your way out of it. I am assuming that you are not mentally ill and have an IQ above room tempeture. You probably have a background of support and encouragement from friends and family.
However, their are lots of people in the U.S. who are either mentally ill or who do not have the intelligence as you put it to lift themselves out of it. Even beyond those special cases of mental illness or less than average intelligence many people just do not have the skills to lift themselves out of poverty.
If your parents are not high school graduates you are much less likely to become one and will in general earn a lot less than a High school graduate. Working at a minimum wage job does not supply you with much of a safety net. One serious illness or upset and you are back on the street. Severe poverty is a vicious thing it saps people of a hope and a belief they can do it.
I am an example of the American Dream: Wife, Kids, Good Job, House, cars etc in general a good life. I am doing better than my parents. But to think I did it by all by myself would be very egotistical. I did it with help from my family and friends. If I see farther and do more, it is because I stand on their shoulders.
I grew up in the Fulda Gap, where did you?