Slashdot Mirror
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."
not only that she never heard of these kinds of scams.... but that no one who could have talked her out of it before then had either...
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
"It is immoral to allow a sucker to keep their money."
I am officially gone from
This woman is the reason these kinds of scams exist. She should be exiled.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
"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."
Slashdot is not exactly going to be a sympathetic crowd here. What we have is an intelligent person who ignored every single bit of advice from a multitude of sources in favor of outright greed. So now she wants to warn people, but is it really going to do any good? She clearly would have ignored the advice she is now giving.
yes, for most of us here on slashdot, this is incredibly brain dead, but in general, there is a problem with you if you blame the victim for a crime, no matter how foolish or stupid they acted
whether a rape victim for wearing revealing clothes, or a guy walking in a dangerous neighborhood at night, yes: you can attack the victim, but if you want to actually claim any moral highground (which many of you seem to assume with a withering condescending tone as you blame the victim), the person who bears 100% responsibility and accountability for a crime is the criminal themselves, and only the criminal, and no one else
using knowledge and care to avoid crime is of course an important aspect of any behavior, but just because someone fails to do this, for any reason, does not mean they share blame for being victimized: a transgression is a transgression is a transgression. no one ASKS to be victimized in such a horrible way
if you walk by the front door of a house, and the house is wide open, and no one is home, and in plain site is a stack of 20 dollar bills, you are 100% responsible and culpable if you take that stack of $20s. the person who left them there like that is, yes, pretty stupid. but they deserve zero blame. the criminal, ALWAYS the criminal is responsible for the trangressions that the criminal freely chooses to commit
any other opinion on the issue is, frankly, not morally or philosophically coherent
although, for some you then, by all means, heckle the woman who gave away $$00K, since some of you honeslty and openly claim no moral high ground
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What? Nigerian scams are lies. Casinos post the rules, and play by them. And you can actually win a little in a casino. No one ever won by sending money to a Nigerian.
everything in moderation
which is worse?:
1. man falls asleep at wheel of truck, smashes into bus full of kids, kills 10. feels awful about it
2. man carefully watches bus route for weeks, carefully plotting and calculating exactly when to smash into bus to kill children. he kills 2 children. he feels bad he didn't kill more
#2 is absolutely many times more criminal than #1, even though he killed far less children. because of a magic concept which all legal codes understand: intent
any legal code in the world has a difference of understanding between manslaughter and murder, with the punishment for murder being far worse than manslaughter. the magic difference? intent
do you know what intent is? you apparently do not, it currently does not inform your opinions
if you leave a stack of $20s out, you are thoughtless. you have no intent. therefore, you have committed no crime. meanwhile, if you walk into an open door and take the stack of $20s, you have a clear intent to commit a transgressive act and relieve someone else of something valuable which is not yours. you, and you alone, are culpable for what you have done
the magic concept?
intent
intent underlies all readings of morality in all cultures, for clear and obvious reasons of logical and philosophical coherence on the question of right and wrong
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"The scammers ran Spears through the whole program. They said President Bush and FBI Director "Robert Muller" (their spelling) were in on the deal and needed her help."
And all you people doubted our President's intelligence! He's opening additional revenue streams to get us out of debt.
I can only hope and pray that Obama, having African blood and thus being more closely related to our Nigerian friends, will be able to expand this source of government revenue.
SSC
I don't even keep a joint checking account with my wife... why the hell would I allow her access to my retirement savings? I'm also not clear on how she managed to remortgage the house without her husband's signature.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
No, there is a major difference - the Nigerians lie to you, the casinos don't.
That's basically what defines a scam, in my opinion. If you can take people at their word then you have nobody to blame but yourself for the outcome. If you can't then it becomes a whole different issue - sure, this woman was a greedy moron and I don't pity her, but the fact remains that she was lied to, the only difference is these scammers happened to be bad liars and she fell for it anyway. The only way that a lot of scams work, especially those that prey on people's good nature rather than greed, can work is by outright lying.
The adage "You can't cheat an honest man" pretty much holds if the truth is told; if you can convince people to invest in your pyramid scheme without lying to them (which, unfortunately, probably isn't that hard) then maybe they should have taken a closer look at the financial viability of what they were putting their money into. If, however, you say there's a guaranteed return rate then they should be able to take you at your word on that and have their money returned if it fails.
Her thought process is exactly the same as a gambling addict. The ethics of casino's and Nigerian scammers are different, but she belongs at Gamblers Anonymous.
You're the one who seems confused here.
There are three utterly separate concepts at play here, and you seem insistent for reasons I cannot comprehend to squish them all into a single idea:
Any combination of these three ideas can be found in real life. As there are eight different combinations I'm not going to bother coming up with examples of all of them, but it should be pretty clear that they can happen.
Note that I am not talking about punishment, or anything of the sort. The scammers should be punished, end of story. But that doesn't change the fact that it was this woman's own damned fault for being such an idiot that she got scammed. That doesn't mean I think that she deserves it or that she should be punished or anything like that. Please, if you are going to argue, argue based on what I actually say and not these crazy ideas you imagine I believe.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Oh, they see their money right away after they've securitized the loan into a credit deriviative and sold it on the international investment market. Then it is the next sucker's problem.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Blaming the victim in this case is perfectly legitimate. Most long cons like this involve an appeal to the element of criminality on the part of the victim. Why would this woman think that she is entitled to pull millions of dollars worth of free money out of Africa?
The basic Nigerian scam depicts a corrupt official stealing money who 'needs your help'. To fall for it isn't just stupid, it's venal.
Everybody is saying this woman is stupid. That may not be the problem. She may be otherwise intelligent, but she is greedy, and that overrides her reasoning.
This woman wanted money she didn't earn, and got what she deserved.
Downmod me all you want fuckers, you know she's gonna do it!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Sad but true. In an effort to fight misogynist sexism, certain laws have become misandrist. For example, here in Brasil, it requires little evidence to send a man to jail if he is accused of rape. An angry girlfriend, for example, can have sex with the man, then go to the police, have an exam that shows they indeed had sex, and based on this have him arrested for rape (not necessary to prove the sex was forced). An impoverished man will then linger in the jail for months or years, waiting for the public attorney. And remember what happens to inmates accused of rape.
Misandry is wrong, just like racism against whites (or, in these times of euphemism and political correctness, "affirmative action") is wrong and probably unconstitutional in many countries.
"Spears said it would take her at least three to four years to dig out of the debt she ran up in pursuit of the non-existent pot of Nigerian gold."
Call me amoral, but if she makes enough money that it only takes 3-4 years to get out of $400,000 in debt, I don't feel bad for her.
I'm sure there are people blowing a couple year-s salaries in Vegas every day... they only have slightly better odds then her at getting money and are just as gullible.
Look, I don't get it.
I'm not particularly ambitious, corporate-ladder wise, but I make decent money IMO.
But I'm not insanely stupid with my money, either.
Yet I don't have $400,000 to blow.
If I did, I sure as fuck wouldn't give it to MR AKELE MBUMBA OF NIGERIA.
What I don't understand is: How does someone so stupid have so much money?
Anyone?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Incredible. Your posts are so well argued, so well thought out, so coherent and so well spelt. I almost forgot I was on Slashdot.
But, your lack of capitalization and irreverent and lacking use of punctuation robs your message of value. It's a crime but, I can't figure out who shoulders the blame. Is it you or me?
It's actually even worse than that. If the actions she *thought* she was taking were real, *she* would be committing a crime.
It's really, really, really hard to feel bad for someone who loses a lot of their own money while attempting launder money, steal from foreigners and foreign governments, and commit usury.
The real victim here is the husband.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I have been an idiot many times. I have made stupid mistakes which cost me a great deal of time and money. I blame myself as much as is appropriate for those mistakes.
One time my wallet was stolen by a pickpocket. Of course the pickpocket gets the blame for this. But so do I. I was stupid. I stood in a crowded area known for pickpocketing and did nothing to protect my wallet. Logical consequence of these actions: my wallet was no longer there. Because this was my fault (AND the pickpocket's fault) I knew that there were things I could do to protect myself in the future. I learned my lesson, and have not been a victim of pickpocketing since.
I'm not enabling anyone. You seem to continually ignore the fact that in the class of crimes under discussion, I am blaming both the victim and the criminal. If the victim took knowing steps which resulted in the crime, then they absolutely deserve blame. This is a separate issue from the question of whether or not to blame the criminal.
Blame is not a zero-sum game. It does not get divided in half when you spread it to two people.
Sometimes something bad happens and nobody is at fault.
Sometimes something bad happens and everybody involved is at fault.
Sometimes something bad happens and only some of the people involved are at fault.
By examining cases in which I could potentially be involved, looking at who is at fault, and seeing what those people could have done to avoid the situation, I am able to learn from other people's mistakes.
Saying that you must never blame the victim puts you in a situation where you can never take any action to reduce your chance of being a victim. Which is simply not how the world works. You can absolutely take actions which reduce your chances of being a victim of crime, and you should.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Because someone with points found it funny.
Perhaps we should all run our modding through you first to make sure we're getting it right?
Or perhaps people can just spend their points as they see fit.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
Greed is beneficial as long as the greedy individual can keep what he or she obtains. Greedy individuals can better support their offspring, who generally share their greedy genes. The balance between greed and altruism basically depends on the general wisdom of society. The more altruistic people are, the more greedy people can benefit, but the less altruistic people are, the less they benefit from cooperation. A stable point is where there is just enough altruism and greed to consume all the available resources without too many people getting upset and changing the gene pool with a shotgun.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=greed
-noun
excessive or rapacious desire, esp. for wealth or possessions.
Not all desire for gain is greed.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/