Woman Admits Sending $400K To Nigerian Scammer

svnt writes "Janella Spears wiped out her husband's retirement account, remortgaged their paid-for house, and took out a lien against the family car in an attempt to cash in on the deal. A undercover officer involved with the investigation called it the worst example of the scam he's ever seen. Thoughtfully, Spears has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall victim."

Comments

Re:I'm amazed

[Free the Cowards]

RTFA, a lot of people tried to talk her out of it but she was so obsessed (i.e. stupid) that they simply couldn't.

Re:I'm amazed

[turtledawn]

For more than two years, Spears sent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted.

Re:Bank CEO refused transfer

[Rastl]

I work for a bank but not anywhere near the money, thank goodness. During our annual compliance training there's a section on this kind of thing. We're supposed to try to dissuade the person but if they persist they need to physically sign a form that they're taking out the money against the advice of the bank.

So while we can't refuse to give a person their money (assuming they haven't been declared incompetent) we can cover our own butts from future lawsuits by showing that the person was warned.

Seems to me this person just didn't believe anyone. You can't reason with people like that. My money's on her falling for some other scam within the next five years. Especially since she thinks she can recoup her losses in under five years.

Anyone up for the 'Recover your money from Nigerian scammers' scam? Or has that been done?

Re:I'm amazed

[cbiltcliffe]

IQ works on a curve.

An IQ of 100 is the 50th percentile. You have exactly half the world stupider than you, and half the world smarter than you.

50% of the population has an IQ between 90 and 110. This is considered, by most, to be the range classed as "average."
25% of people are dumber than 90, and 25% are smarter than 110.
96% are between 80 and 120, so only 2% are smarter than 120.
If I remember rightly, 99.5% are between 70 and 130, so if you're above 130, you're above the 99.75 percentile.

If you're at or above 140, you're a fscking genius, on any scale. And if you're above 140, then 98% of the population (80..120 + <80) is more than 20 IQ points below you. (And "average" is 30-50 points below you.)

So, if you meet a genius, and (s)he says the world is full of morons, you've got to realize that from their perspective, it's true. 98% of people they meet are as mentally slow or slower relative to them as a borderline mental retard of 70-79 IQ is to an average person.

That's why 50% of the people you meet being of average intelligence is pretty fucking scary, when you're talking from the point of view of a genius.

This is all, of course, assuming that cthulu_mt is actually genius material. :)

Re:I'm amazed

[DrLang21]

She says it almost invariably comes from poorly educated people in down and out life situations. It's like they're clinging to a false hope.

Droves? I know she's told me specifically about at least three cases in the last year. This is a bank branch in a fairly small and very rural area (cities with populations in the 30,000 to 40,000 range). I can only imagine what happens in densely populated areas like where I live now.