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Comments: 857 +- Technology: Woman Admits Sending $400K To Nigerian Scammer on Thursday November 13 2008, @02:44PM
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samzenpus
on Thursday November 13 2008, @02:44PM
from the headdesk dept.
from the headdesk dept.
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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."
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Canada Bill Jones would be proud (Score:5, Insightful)
"It is immoral to allow a sucker to keep their money."
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Husband's retirement account (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Re:Wrong crowd (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Ignore warnings and claim you're helping a Nigerian prince
3. Play victim and make it public
4.
5. Profit!
Parent
Here is step 4. (Score:5, Funny)
4. ... Divorce husband and move away.
Parent
Re:Wrong crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
What we have is an intelligent person who ignored every single bit of advice from a multitude of sources in favor of outright greed.
Your use of the word 'intelligent' is debatable.
Parent
For those not reading TFA (Score:5, Funny)
"Janella Spears doesnt think shes a sucker or an easy mark."
"They said President Bush and FBI Director "Robert Muller" (their spelling) were in on the deal and needed her help."
"When Spears began to doubt the scam, she got letters from the President of Nigeria, FBI Director Mueller, and President Bush. Terrorists could get the money if she did not help, Bushâ(TM)s letter said. Spears continued to send funds."
"Most of the missives were rife with misspellings."
Priceless!
Re:For those not reading TFA (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think a bunch of misspellings from somebody claiming to be President Bush would be a tipoff of something wrong. No misspellings would be a tipoff!
Parent
Thoughtfully? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps. But Occam's razor suggests that it never occurred to her that there might be a downside to publicly admitting to being this stupid, and she went public not "thoughtfully" as a "warning to others" but rather unthinkingly as a further example of what happens when you never think things through.
--MarkusQ
sooo close (Score:5, Funny)
Bank CEO refused transfer (Score:5, Interesting)
I know a bank CEO who refused to transfer money for a Nigerian scam, and the woman accuses him of standing in the way of her making millions. A variety of people have spoken with her, but she is adamant. This standoff has existed for weeks. I don't know the final status.
"You can fool some of the people all the time ..."
Re:Bank CEO refused transfer (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Parent
I don't understand. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but she is going to get that money back within 2 years -- by selling the rights to her story..... but first, she has to put up a small investment to get the agent working.......
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Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
Poor woman probably even hawked her banjo.
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Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
Does that involve the ban of any reproduction for them? :)
If not, it's worthless.
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Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is she actively disturbing evolution?
I think it's a good thing to take resources from the stupid, and give it to the smart. And that's what's happening. Even if you do not like it. :)
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
My mother works at a bank and she has to talk people out of these scams on a regular basis
I always knew that these scams were practically a national pastime in Nigeria, but what I didn't know is that not only do people still fall for these things (apparently in droves)... but often it takes a small army of professional hostage negotiators to talk them out of wiring their entire life's savings to a total stranger over in a country whose rate of societal corruption rivals OURS!!
The reality of it all is what blows me away!
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Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
But she was definitely stupid to ignore *everyone's* advice. I feel sorry for her husband.
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Re:I'm amazed (Score:5)
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Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of this elderly couple I help with the computers working at the college. They've fallen for this pyramid scheme that is just so painfully obvious, but the old man just keeps explaining he's had enough experience (that is, has gotten fucked before) to know better and the old woman just follows along and doesn't ask any questions.
"It's not a scam, it's a high yield investment!"
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet, somehow she thinks that sharing HER story with the world will convince other people? If only someone had shared their story with her, she could have avoided this terrible mess, so she's going to make sure it doesn't happen to others? Please. Even in acknowledging her stupidity, she shows no sense.
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
Not only that but from the article (Yeah, it seems like all of us just HAD to read this one.):
"Janella Spears doesn't think she's a sucker or an easy mark."
Janella, no, you're not a sucker or an easy mark. You're the dumbest fucking person on Earth.
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
Janella Spears doesn't think she's a sucker or an easy mark.
Many people like to believe that they are basically intelligent. They may readily admit that they don't know everything, but insist that they have a pretty good handle on most (if not all) of the really important things.
Far fewer people are actually willing to take the actions necessary to make such a belief true. Being "basically intelligent" requires that one make study and reflection part of one's lifestyle. Stopping with that once one graduates from school more-or-less guarantees that one is not, and will never be, "basically intelligent."
The real problem I have with this is that stupid people are not only a danger to themselves; they are a danger to those around them. Stupid people vote in favor of harmful/oppressive laws (or candidates), drive dangerously, harm the economy through poor money-management practices, harm their friends and family (sometimes emotionally, sometimes financially, sometimes physically) through stupid lifestyle practices, and so on.
In my opinion, it is every human's moral obligation to regularly invest a portion of their week to the business of improving their own cognitive abilities. And I don't just mean memorizing facts, but also engaging the mind's critical thinking capacities. One must be presented with genuine intellectual challenge in order to improve intelligence. One must, in other words, do things that are hard, since sticking with easy tasks will not produce the desired result.
And for God's sake, read Personal Finance for Dummies. If you haven't read it, stop trying to convince yourself you already know how money works. The book costs 15 bucks...just freaking READ IT!
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Interesting)
...because we don't live in a world of 99 uniform dumbasses and 1 genius. We live in a world with lots of dumbasses and lots of very smart people, with most folks somewhere in the middle. It's a normal distribution so, yes, 50% are below the mean.
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Informative)
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. :)
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
An IQ of 100 is the 50th percentile. You have exactly half the world stupider than you, and half the world smarter than you.
Correction: what it means is half the world scores worse than you on some random test, and half the world scores better.
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
153, last test I took.
Doesn't mean I'm motivated, good at life OR immune to being suckered in. Just good at solving puzzles, reasoning and logic problems.
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
Mean [wikipedia.org], Median [wikipedia.org] and Mode [wikipedia.org]. In a world of 99 uniform dumbasses and 1 genius, 99% would be below mean intelligence.
Not sure where you get the 50% from.
I don't know - I've met a lot of mean dumbasses and come to think of it, a lot of them were in uniform.
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
That's my thoughts--anyone as DUMB as she is won't believe her!
But this is beyond stupidity--she is clearly mentally ill and you've got to wonder why the husband, banks, family members ALLOWED this to go on. It wasn't like no one knew what she was doing. Why couldn't they have her name removed from accounts and not allowed access to the funds...declare her mentally unfit or whatever it took?
This is similar to those stories you hear once and awhile on how some old person spent thousands on magazines they didn't need, thinking it would help them win the Publisher's Clearing House prize.
Parent
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
But she is old and probably grew old before internet and probably never traveled much (considering her background, seemly very likely -teacher and a priest of some sort -both very local professions). So there is some reason why she believed everything she was told. And she spent till she could spend no more.
She is gullible, but now she is taking a very, very brave decision, which is to admit her mistakes publicly.
The hope here is that there are two thresholds to spending - one one the amount of information and the other on the amount of money.When you get to either of them you stop sending money to Nigeria
She clearly did not get to her threshold of info before she got to the threshold of money. Hopefully by sharing her story, she is raising the awareness in other people who may be being scammed and they will back out of the stupidity before they hit the threshold of money themselves.
Another way of looking at it is that while the cost of going public is very very high and she alone bears the costs, she hopes that there is some (small, LordKronos says) limited benefit to doing this. Moreover she wont reap the benefits, the public will. So what she is doing is actually a good thing.
I'll ignore her stupidity considering it has limited impact on me, but will applaud the fact she went public with the info (since it provides some benefit to me -if nothing else, helps calculating the odds of being conned).
If nothing else, show some concern for old people and people who are not as smart as you are. Brain does'nt remain what it is in the youth and this is inevitable for you an me
Parent
Re:just to preempt all of the obvious comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but that's simply wrong.
There are certain actions which you can take which, while not in any sense illegal, are virtually guaranteed to cause harm to yourself.
Leaving a stack of money out for anyone to take is one of these. Playing along to an internet scam is another. And although I'm sure I'll get flamed for saying so, teasingly parading past men in a bad neighborhood while wearing a revealing outfit is another.
Your fallacy is essentially in assuming that blame is a percentage which must be portioned out among the actors involved in the event. It is true that if I leave a stack of money out in plain view it is 100% the fault of the criminal for taking it. It is also 100% my fault for being a complete idiot.
If I take an action which I know, or should have very good reason to know, will cause me harm even if that harm is illegal, then it is my fault for taking that action and I bear the blame for the consequences. It is also the fault of whoever actually does it to me, but that doesn't change the first part.
People like this woman cause crime by making it pay off for the criminals. She deserves a whole heap of blame, just as much as the scammers do.
Parent
Re:just to preempt all of the obvious comments (Score:5, Interesting)
Your fallacy is essentially in assuming that blame is a percentage which must be portioned out among the actors involved in the event. It is true that if I leave a stack of money out in plain view it is 100% the fault of the criminal for taking it. It is also 100% my fault for being a complete idiot.
Yes exactly. Blame is not a zero-sum game. Thinking otherwise is idiotic, or, in most cases, an attempt to deny blame using the false logic of "That person over there is to blame, therefore I cannot be blamed". If you don't think about it too hard it makes sense, but we shouldn't fall for such blatant illogic.
Parent
Re:your view of morality is logically incoherent (Score:5, Insightful)
Intent has nothing to do with blame.
I'm not talking about how much people should be punished. As far as I'm aware that was not even brought up in the thread. I am talking about whose fault a particular outcome is.
If I carry out an action with well-known consequences then I am at fault for those consequences. This is true whether I'm parking illegally and getting a ticket, climbing a tree in a thunderstorm and getting struck by lightning, or giving a scammer money and getting ripped off.
Certainly, what the scammer did was morally and legally wrong and what this woman did was not. But that is orthogonal to the fact that it is this woman's fault that she got ripped off. (And it is also the scammer's fault for ripping her off.)
Parent
Re:dude (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:no, you won't blame yourself for being an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:lets follow your thought to the logical conclus (Score:5, Funny)
I think all this talk of Nigerian email scams is affecting you...
Parent
Re:just to preempt all of the obvious comments (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if you try to cross a 4 lane highway during rush hour and you end up underneath a truck, no blame should be put on you?
Your logic relies heavily on the word "criminal". That's quite problematic, as its definition is not absolute. Crossing a highway IS criminally stupid. Falling for a well known scam and ignoring every warnings one is given is as stupid (though generally not as deadly). Spears saw it coming and didn't react, she is partially to blame for what happened to her.
Parent
Re:just to preempt all of the obvious comments (Score:5, Insightful)
She gave the scammers money because they promised millions of dollars in return. Unlike a rape or armed robbery, it's the greed of the scam victims themselves that lures them into the scheme. Thus, they have some culpability in the crime that someone attacked on the street does not.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The Nigerian scam is no more of a scam than... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Tattooed (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:She had it coming (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Awful (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Awful (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, 50% is a terrible return on a Nigerian scam. You should shop around some.
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