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Man Loses Millions In Bizarre Virus-Protection Scam
Orome1 writes "A US court has heard that a couple conned at least $6 million from the great-grandson of an oil industry tycoon after he brought his virus-infected computer in for repair. The couple are said to have tricked the composer into believing that, while investigating the virus, they had found evidence that his life was in danger – concocting a story that the virus had been tracked to a hard drive in Honduras, and that evidence had been found that the composer's life was in danger." The victim here, Roger Davidson, may have lost as much as $20 million, after being convinced that he was in danger from a grand conspiracy. Vickram Bedi and girlfriend Helga Invarsdottir convinced Davidson to pay $160,000 monthly, and possibly much more, for their help.
If he was successful as composer and had signed a deal with any of the big labels he would have been left empty-handed by now.
I mean seriously. Do people really fall for these scams?
"A fool and his money are soon parted" -- Thomas Tusser.
It's as true today as when he said it back in the 1500s.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Yes problem is, that in between fixing my guitar, my laptop, my tv and my fridge, I need to find some time to become skilled in fixing the hairdryer. My family wants some time from me. And the government wants me to put into some time to pay them for whatever service it is they tell me I just bought. In the end... I think I'd just let a qualified mechanic look at the car I transport my kids in ;)
We've been contacted by an alien named Lurg. He comes from the planet Xulton in the in the Doovi nebula. Lurg informed us, that unless you pay him... errr.. I mean us... $160,000 a month, he will steal your child and make him a slave in the Galvanium mines of Dooviburg. You may be tempted to contact the United States authorities about this, however, any contact with them will result in the immediate death of your son.
Bet these chumps would fall for that too.
More and more I feel that people who are that paranoid and quick to believe conspiracies have an extrem form of narcism. They actually believe that the are important enough to worth that much effort. They think the world is out to get them in fact most the world doesn't even know they are here.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
> More of a stupid tax than a scam, really.
Which is, in and of itself, an interesting dichotomy. To what extent should the law protect those who don't protect themselves? That's an issue comes up in false advertising cases, in tort cases, in welfare issues, in tax policy, and generally throughout society, as soon as you decide there will be rule of law. Do we defend someone against malicious speech? Against the elements? Do we care if they could have diffused a situation with a kind word and instead chose to be belligerent and got punched in the nose? Do we feel differently if the nose hit belongs to a woman or a man or a child or a dog? A multimillionaire should be able to protect himself, but then, if it's inherited, he may have no nose for it. Or if he's only used to dealing with reputable companies, he may be hoodwinked.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Yes, Mr. Davidson, they are out to get you. You just misunderstood who they are.
Naivete and paranoia are a dangerous combination.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
A friend of mine was renting a room in the house of a lady who lived down the street from me. She had been suckered into a Nigerian 419 scam, was convinced that the people she was communicating with were "Good Christians", and sent them about $30,000. When she took out a loan against her home, her daughters attempted to intervene with the courts to declare her incapable of managing her assets. She ended up losing the house and all her money, and my friend lost his room. She was a nice old lady whose mind was starting to go, and unfortunately was taken advantage of by some cold bastards. Don't mock too hard, it could be someone you love or even you one day.
More and more I feel that people who are that paranoid and quick to believe conspiracies have an extreme form of narcissism. They actually believe that the are important enough to worth that much effort. They think the world is out to get them in fact most the world doesn't even know they are here.
Unlike everyone here who has all there important documents^Hporn encrypted and hidden with TrueCrypt on six hard drives stuffed in the laundry room and the USB stick stuffed in their mom's purse while tunneling into Slashdot with two proxies on different continents?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
We've been contacted by an alien named Lurg. He comes from the planet Xulton in the in the Doovi nebula. Lurg informed us, that unless you pay him... errr.. I mean us... $160,000 a month, he will steal your child and make him a slave in the Galvanium mines of Dooviburg. You may be tempted to contact the United States authorities about this, however, any contact with them will result in the immediate death of your son.
That's not creative at all. You just ripped off L. Ron HubbleBubble and changed the names
Robin Hood gave his stolen money to the poor. I don't think these guys will be doing that. They would steal from the poor as well if it seemed profitable. Scammers are the lowest form of humanity.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
More and more I feel that people who are that paranoid and quick to believe conspiracies have an extrem form of narcism. They actually believe that the are important enough to worth that much effort. They think the world is out to get them in fact most the world doesn't even know they are here.
If he has $6 to $20 million dollars to be conned out of, you don't have to be narcissistic to think you are a target, you are the top of the top 1%. Sometimes, they really are out to get you.
There's nothing wrong with being a trust fund baby. We all wanna be one, don't be jealous. What would you expect, you'd turn 18 and give it all away?
This is no 'Robin Hood' scenario, it's straight up theft & fraud. They should go to jail.
Someone foolish enough to buy this sort of nonsense will lose all their money soon enough anyway. I'd rather that cash go to the engineers and line workers who produce fancy cars in Italy than a couple of con artists.
I'm not sure where you have to hang out, and for how long, before you get confused about fraud, theft, lies and deceit, and why we shouldn't encourage this sort of thing.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
More and more I feel that people who are that paranoid and quick to believe conspiracies have an extrem form of narcism. They actually believe that the are important enough to worth that much effort. They think the world is out to get them in fact most the world doesn't even know they are here.
There is one glaring problem with that viewpoint. It may have been true back when tracking/spying on a particular target would have required special effort and dedication of manpower. It is no longer true now that surveillance, monitoring, and database technology has advanced to the point where monitoring everyone all of the time is becoming increasingly feasible and cost-effective.
For one narrow example, consider police. It used to be that if they wanted to track someone's whereabouts, they had to assign police officers to stake out a suspect and follow him/her around. That's expensive. There are only so many police officers. Dedicating a number of them to constantly track a particular individual had to be justified. That individual had to be exceptional and extraordinary to justify this cost, because that manpower could be put to much better use otherwise. Now it's both cost-effective and (recently) legally justifiable to simply install GPS tracking devices on citizens' vehicles. Now a computer can automatically perform that tracking and all it costs is a piece of mass-produced electronics that only becomes cheaper over time.
Far from narcissists, I am coming to believe that those you call "paranoid" are realists. In a previous era they may have been quaint and paranoid but these days they're among the few willing to face the implications of a hard truth.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The New York Times has a more in-depth article on this case, and it seems strange indeed.
There's an old saying: "You can't con an honest man." Most cons work because they prey on the victim's own greed or baser emotions. I wonder how much of this was going on in this case?
The Times article contains a few choice tidbits. Apparently, once he got into cahoots with the scammers, Mr. Davidson got involved with some plot of theirs to sue Wachovia Bank for mismanaging Davidson's trust fund, among other things. That sounds suspiciously like the classic con, where you give the con man some of your money in return for the promise that he'll get you lots more money later.
If nothing else, Davidson does sound a little credulous, and possibly mentally ill. The scammers told him his life was supposedly in danger from a group of Polish priests with ties to Opus Dei, whom the scammers told him had a plan to overthrow the United States government. How plausible is that? But then, if you were already rabidly anti-Catholic, it might sound very plausible. Most of us probably wouldn't believe there was an international conspiracy on our lives in the first place, no matter how rich we were; but if you were mentally unstable with delusions of grandeur, you might.
The final paragraph of the NYT article says Davidson's outgoing voicemail message says, “If you leave an ad or any other such message, your telephone wire will be fried automatically.” Who would claim such a thing? You might as well say you're going to report them to the Men in Black.
It seems to me that if Davidson was thinking clearly, none of this would have played out the way it did -- but I guess we knew that already.
Breakfast served all day!
Well, yeah, but a good mechanic will do it properly. That's why you pay extra. Personally I'm not very good with cars and I don't have time to change the headlight fluid every six months, but I am concerned about driving at night when the headlights aren't ionized properly.
You should see my mechanic; he's not the cheapest but he'll fix problems with your car you didn't even know you had, and that other guys aren't sharp enough to notice.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Everything is not black and white. To say essentially 'because I cannot know everything I should know nothing' is not much of an excuse. Nobody has to be a certified mechanic to know when your mechanic is screwing you, just like nobody needs to program in cobol to know that when your 'tech' asks for 160k a month you might want a second opinion.
I'd say in this case, he wasn't paranoid ENOUGH.
The scammers had access to his hard drive. They probably just looked at his browsing history to find out which conspiracy theory websites he frequented and made up something that matched up with whatever strange beliefs this guy may have already had. That's what I would do if I wanted to scam someone.
Ever since 2002 the US government has been scaring its citizens with a bizarre grand conspiracy theory concocted by DHS and TSA to convince Americans they are in mortal danger from everything from shoes to ink cartridges, and the only solution is to spend vast sums of money on security and endless war while depriving the people of more and more of their liberties.
There's nothing wrong with being a trust fund baby. We all wanna be one, don't be jealous.
But there is a hell of a lot wrong with a trust fund baby that's also a dumbass.
It goes completely against the american ethic we all learned in civics class of rewarding excellence.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
True, but in the case the only ones out to get him, well, got him. Maybe that means he should have been more paranoid...
Why is parent +5 insightful? Being jealous of people with lots of money is not reason to mod this crap up.
Look at it this way: These people took advantage of someone who had, obviously, some form of mental illness. Add to that he's technologically illiterate, and things don't look so good.
Here's what the parent should have said:
The parent poster needs medication as much as the victim.
Stealing from the poor is profitable. State lotteries, tobacco companies, and televangelists do it all the time.
Continents? Continents?!?
Piffle!
I'm riding 3 satellites and a worm-hole, baby!
Best,
Bruce Schneier
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I believe we shouldn't punish a person for being born poor. No one has a choice about who their parents would be.
But by that same token we shouldn't punish someone for being born rich either.
My page.
There is this attitude from many, such as you, that just because someone has money they are a bad person. As such they deserve to have bad things happen to them. What a horrible, shallow, short-sighted view. This is particularly true when you are talking someone like a trust-fund kid. At least in the case of someone who started normal and became rich I suppose you could believe they were underhanded and stole money from others if you are a hard core Marxist and have zero understanding of real economies. However someone born in to it? How is that their fault in any way, shape or form? While I certainly don't pity them for begin born in to privilege, I don't hate them for winning the genetic lottery. Hell, all of us who are fortunate enough to live in developed countries and have Internet access won the genetic lottery globally speaking.
So seriously, get some fucking perspective and get some fucking humanity. I get tired of seeing rich-hatred on this site, it is as stupid as any other kind of blind, over-generalized, hate.
And before you point fingers no, I'm not rich. I work for my reasonably modest living. I just happen to understand that I am lucky even in what I have, on a global scale, and I've met people who make a good deal more and less than I do and found those that are kind and caring and cruel and callous in both groups. Money does not define a person.
Unlike everyone here who has all there important documents^Hporn encrypted
"important documentporn"? I think you meant ^W or ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I once received a 419 letter that took on the form of a death threat. The writer claimed he was a hit man contracted to kills me, but for a price, he would tell me who my enemy was, and sell me a video of the contract being made. It told me not to contact the police, or he would act immediately. I could tell from the broken English that it was a 419, but I did call the police, hoping they could catch the scammer. They couldn't. I imagine that a senior or eccentric rich person would have taken this seriously, and done what they were told. Naturally, as soon as they paid, the scammer would say their enemy had upped the offer, and they need more money. This story reminds me of that letter I recieved.
There is a lot of truth to it in terms of certain kind of scams. When you are talking immoral scams yes it is usually true. Things like the Nigerian "Help me steal millions of dollars from my country," things. Well you can't scam someone honest with that because it is a dishonest proposition. Even if you were 100% for real an honest person wouldn't do it because it is wrong.
However there are other scams that work perfectly well on honest people. Ones that play on fear are a good example. You convince someone is in danger and they have to do X to not be. No dishonesty there, they just don't want to be hurt. That is perfectly understandable. I mean if you were able to honestly convince me that my life was in danger and the only way out way to pay, well I'd do it. Now of course I'd be rather hard to convince of that fact, I have a good deal of faith in our police forces and my marksmanship, not to mention a good understanding of just how not worth it it would be to try and kill me. However supposing you found a perfectly believable set of evidence that could well and truly convince me then sure, because I'd think it was real and not want to die.
This leads to the second part that it is possible to scam people who are not as bright and who are credulous and/or gullible. While it may be trendy for geeks to hate on people who are less intelligent as though it was their fault, simple fact of the matter is that as with so much else in humans, intelligence is genetically determined and falls on a bell curve. Just as there are people who smarter than most, there are those who are not. Some people just cannot process data as well as others, cannot reason as well as others, and thus cannot identify and deal with scams as well as others.
So while I find this scam laughably stupid, well I'm a computer support and security professional. I know how this shit works, and the holes are easy to spot. For someone who doesn't know as much, and perhaps is slightly below average intelligence, perhaps it seemed far more plausible.
They're con artists. Are you saying you don't want artists to get their fair share of the work they produce? Are you valuing automobile design more than the incredible art of conning? It takes skill and cunning to be a con artist, something which very few people have. You should respect their profession instead of denigrating it as "fraud".
Ah! Artists are never really understood by the masses.
It's sort of sad. Then again, he is an heir. He didn't earn the money. The guys who stole it from him worked harder for it than he did.
I was out that long? Seems like it happened just last week... How time flies
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Robin Hood was running a guerrilla campaign against the nobility in the area. Of course he gave money to the poor. They would have ratted him out otherwise.
The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ,it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's. -G.K. Chesterton
if you have to encrypt your porn then your are a kid or it is some sick shit of kids
Or you are just from a sick country. In Australia, pics of small-breasted women of any age are considered child porn... even if they're clearly like 35 or something.
Is the world so impoverished that we can't spare a few Backspace keys? Who needs ^H anymore? vi users who can't afford vim?
So no more pictures of my wife I guess ....
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Unlike everyone here who has all there important documents^Hporn encrypted
"important documentporn"? I think you meant ^W or ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H.
No, he got it right.
The word "documentporn" is german for porn kept at the office mixed into a stack of documents that no one would ever look at otherwise.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
He'd rather dick around with his guitar and TV than become informed about a two ton device that can kill others and that is one of the most likely instruments in a premature death of his children. His priorities are clear.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
They did get him......
Nos Morituri te salutamus
Except none of those examples you gave is an example of "stealing from the poor." Those examples are people willingly giving money to those entities. No one is putting a gun to people's heads and telling them to buy lottery tickets, smoke tobacco, or give money to televangelists.
terminals in the niiiiiiight exchanging asciii
whoops, we've dropped a byyyyte please hit the break key
dooobeee doobeedooooooooo
Perhaps you should try to not break so much stuff, you ham-fisted fuckhead.
He'd rather a professional deal with his dangerous device than make an expensive or fatal mistake fooling around with it on his own. I'd say his priories are in order. Now, go fix that skin rash with a google search and some caustic herbal concoction.
No Shit.
I administer 3 websites as a "part time". I contracted the hosting and bought the domain. I have been working on computers and programming since around 1988 and as such, I consider myself pretty "computer saavy" (e.e. I used to do cracks and keygens in my youth... ).
Nevertheless, about two weeks ago I've got a mail that seemed quite sincere telling me that certain company wanted to acquire domains similar to one of mines but with different TLD:
Dear Manager,
This email is from China Domain Name registration service company, which is the domain name registration center in Shanghai, China. A formal application here dated on Oct. 18, 2010 from Wells inc requested " XXXXX " as their Internet Brand and China domain names. But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, it's necessary to send email to you and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China ?
Well... it was after exchanging two emails with the bastards that I got it and googled for some background (they were very pushy suggesting me to buy the domains from them :-/)
After some time looking I found out it is a well known scam: http://www.firetrust.com/en/blog/chris/domain-name-scams?page=12
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
You gotta be kidding me.
We now decide on whether or not someone gets to keep their money on the basis of how hard he / she worked to earn it?? What subcommittee, from the dark nether regions of Cthulu's domain, decided this stellar policy in my absence?
The man got swindled. Whether or not the man has $2 or $2 million in his checking account, he deserves our sympathy. That he is an heir, and thus "didn't earn the money," is a poor excuse for some highly despicable behavior.
I am John Hurt.
Day 104: Things have been getting weird ever since I joined his raiding party. He trusts me. They all trust me. Well, except Cranston the Night Elf. I can tell he suspects something.
I'm starting to forget who I am. I've been getting deeper into cheetos. I miss my wife. I can't believe how long I've spent playing someone else.
Acceptable if this had been a reason cited for his reluctance to perform his own maintenance and repairs. He talked of a lack of available time. Time that, by his own admission, he directs towards dicking with his guitar and tv.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Brilliant. I literally can't tell whether you're joking or not.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
Man:
Is your uh, is your wife interested in... photography, ay? 'Photographs, ay', he asked him knowlingly?
Squire:
Photography?
Man:
Snap snap, grin grin, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more?
Squire:
Holiday snaps, eh?
Man:
They could be, they could be taken on holiday.
Candid, you know, CANDID photography?
Squire:
No, no I'm afraid we don't have a camera.
Man:
Oh.
(leeringly)
Still, mooooooh, ay? Mwoohohohohoo, ay? Hohohohohoho, ay?
bickerdyke
Not only did he lose a fortune, he spent a long time kept in fear for his life. If you've even spent a night wondering if people you've pissed off are going to come round and break into your home, imagine spending two years being told a group are trying to kill you.
Incidentally, TFA makes a little fun about Opus Dei, featured in the Da Vinci Code being one of the supposed villains that are after him. Okay, that's a bit of a red flag, but Opus Dei do actually exist and are a sort of sub-cult within Catholicism. They've got their claws into various influential people and actually score moderately well on the Sinister Scale. Lower than Wahabism, bobbing along under Scientology, but certainly high above your run of the mill nutters.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Other than a very high level overview of scamming techniques, what are you going to teach people in schools that will be relevant for the next 60+ years of their life? Scammers have shown time and again that, the second their targets become aware of the scam, they will switch tactics and it's back to square one. When I was at school the internet was practically unheard of, and I'm in my thirties - a lot of the people who get scammed are much older (in fact the elderly are the prime target for scammers), when they were at school computers were practically unheard of. What advice could they have been given back then to prepare them for the internet-based "social engineering" scams of today? Scams are in the news almost every day, we're bombarded with warnings about "identity theft" and such, yet people still frequently fall for these things - clearly awareness is not the issue.
Common sense is the only real defence against these scams, and it's pretty clear that schools have no way of teaching that.
The difference seems to be the gullibility of the target. Both of those ingenius scams can be avoided with a little thought and perhaps some research, if someone is willing to take $100 from me for defragging my monitor do you honestly believe they'd not take $160k from me if they thought I'd be stupid enough to fall for it?
And don't most USians live in fear of the muslim terrorists and Obama's "Death Panels"?
You believe far too much of what you see on TV. Only about 15% of us are crazy, just like any other country. The rest are pretty normal.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
liberal bias! you don't count a right-leaning sad face?
He didn't cite lack of available time. He said, quite clearly, that there are a lot of things vying for his attention, so he prioritizes those which he can accomplish the best.
Spending an hour learning about cars is not going to get you as far as an hour learning about Windows, a hair dryer or a guitar. Also, you have to look at the impact of not doing it right. That changes the importance and focus of the time.
In Australia, pics of small-breasted women of any age are considered child porn...
Hmmm... weaponized small breasts. (looks down shirt) Screw this, I'm moving to Australia, and if anyone says my boobs are small, I can have them arrested for viewing child porn.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
WTF are you??
Who are you to tell me what I should or should not be able to do with my possessions...weather they be physical assets or money??
Part of possession, is the ability to give it to whomever you wish to give it.
It is not to you or the government to tell me who to give my possessions to...whilst I'm alive or who it goes to when I pass on.
How fucking dare you.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How about.. if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Or in this guy's case, if it sounds too bad to be true, it probably is.. Seriously though..If there were possible threats against his life wouldn't you think that the first thing he would do would be to get in contact with the authorities? Not just rely on some computer techs to "guard" them.. If anything they should have atleast called the Geek Squad, atleast they have jet packs.... :)
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
You jest, but I've seen the "turn light fluid" used successfully on someone. It was after a rain during PMCS and a turn light on a hummer had an obvious "half full" fluid level. A new guy in the unit (who apparently didn't know much about vehicles or lighting) was sent on a mission for some "turn light fluid" to top it off with. The mechanics got a good laugh and a soldier became just a bit more cynical. Or how about the classic "hunt for grid squares" a second lieutenant fell for? My favorite was a sergeant who could tell any lie convincingly and with a straight face (often he would start with something small and plausible, then work his way up to to a real whopper). He managed to convince another sergeant that the setting sun was actually Mars on its closest approach to Earth ever.
The real lesson isn't that some people are idiots or know nothing, it is that *everyone* has a threshold of knowledge in some area past which they can be fooled.
Being scammed is not a great comparison to being burgled. When you're scammed you have to make an actively stupid decision to take part in the scam.
When you're burgled, you don't get a direct choice. You can however do a few things to make your house less attractive to burglars. You most definitely should if you have already been subject to a burglary, just as you should learn a bit more about common scams if you have generally poor common sense (as I do, and I still manage not to give my bank account details out to every email that asks).
No need to sign your name at the end of all your posts either.
which is totally what she said