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Nigerian Scam Artists Taken For $33,000
smitty777 writes "An Australian woman who was being used by a group of Nigerian scam artists stole over $33,000 from the group who employed her. Her bank account was being used to funnel the cash from a dodgy internet car sales website. Irony aside, it makes one wonder how these folks ever got the nerve to go to the police with this matter. Those of you wondering, this article offers some answers to the question of why so many of these scams originate from this area."
I tried to scam some scammers once, for far less money. I can definitely see how that would feel like a huge triumph.
I had gotten a response to an ad looking for a roomate. This fuckwad strung me along for days before revealing that they intended to pay for the first months rent and security deposit with a travelers check and "could you please cash it and forward the balance to....".
Oh I was fuming. I put the room back on the market, and continued with the scammer as if nothing happened. I told them the first set of travelers checks never arrived, even though they had and i already verified with the post office that they were fake.... then I got the second set....and admited I knew it was a scam.
At this point, things took a turn for the hilarious. Immediately he switched over to admitting it was a scam and....trying to recruit me to help! He claimed he needed a mailing address in the US, and needed someone to send out packages....claimed he would pay $500 per package of letters!
So of course, I told him I would do it but I needed the money up front...fully intending to keep the money and spend the next decade gloating over how I scammed the scammer.... he even told me he could get counterfit bills.... which got me thinking how fun it would be if this all resulted in my getting to report him to the SS.
Of course, the whole thing broke down when he wanted to talk on the phone....and I wasn't willing to give out my real phone number. I suppose he already had my address so it hardly mattered, but, I didn't want harassing calls either.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
To put the 419 economy into perspective, realize that Nigerians, like all Africans, have learned for hundreds of years that success comes not from hard work and investment, but from power, corruption, theft and scamming. For every hard working, honest European and American who's gone to Africa, there's been 100x more who went there to make a fortune off the backs of those $1 a day people you don't want to interact with.
I've worked in Nigeria for a few years. It is a very large, hard-working, and historically industrious country founded from old trading kingdoms. Nigeria's commercial middle class largely survived colonial times. But the discovery of oil destroyed any sense of hard money. If every foreigner coming to Nigeria gets to drive a large SUV, goes to expensive bars and restaurants, and it's clearly based on a system of massive theft of resources from Nigerians, to benefit foreigners and their local partners, then what system of ethics can stop fraud becoming a massive industry?
419 fraud is not just a random pastime, it's become a profession with entire families living off it, and doing well.
If you want to lecture Africans about ethics, start at home and look how the West treats Africa: a pool of resources to be extracted at the cheapest possible cost with the least possible investment. If the middle class complains, send guns and soldiers to kill them. If there is a politician who tries to get a better deal, murder him or start a civil war to topple him.
There's a reason so many Africans still live at that $1 a day level and it's driven by greed and theft on a huge scale. Fix that, then go and lecture Africans about their morality.