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."

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:She had it coming

[sesshomaru]

It's sounds like the money she sent wasn't actually hers.

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

[Schadrach]

In the school district where I grew up, and where my nephew now attends, they have a "gifted" program for those that (by their own testing), test IQ > 130, with +-3 points of that mark being taken on a case by case basis. I was in it when I was young, and my nephew currently is. Compared to others his age that I've known (including his older brothers/sisters when they were that age) you can tell. He picks up new skills/tasks/knowledge amazingly fast compared to them.

I have a feeling if they had tried to teach him to read earlier than they did he would have ended up an ubergeek bookworm like me (I was barely walking when my mother decided that I should at least look at the storybook she was reading, I picked it up early/quickly enough that I actually have no memory of a time before I was reading junior-high level stuff.

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.

Re:I'm amazed

[Savione]

Yeah, that's the part that I don't get.

At what point did her husband take the stupid pill and forgot to take away her options of ruining him?

From TFA:

She also communicates with lightning-fast sign language with her hearing-impaired husband.

Perhaps that has something to do with it? It seems to me that the spouse that can communicate better with other people is more likely to handle financial affairs.

Re:The Nigerian scam is no more of a scam than...

[Ambvai]

http://www.419eater.com/html/joe_eboh.htm [419eater.com] "'Prince' Joe Eboh contacts me with a classic 419 opening letter. I decide to make him jump through a few hoops before I'm prepared to agree to his proposition, and the results are amusing AND profitable, to the tune of $80 + $49 DHL shipping, so our scammer is down a whopping total of $129"

Re:The Nigerian scam is no more of a scam than...

[Anonymous Coward]

No one ever won by sending money to a Nigerian.

http://419eater.com/ [419eater.com]

These guys bait scammers, usually persuading them to send a ridiculous picture [419eater.com] of themselves - but one guy actually managed to persuade a scammer to send a $25 'clearing fee' before he would send his own 'clearing fee' back.

Re:no, you won't blame yourself for being an idiot

[roman_mir]

dude, you don't get it, do you? While you are arguing about merits of ideas and such and you think that on the other side there is also some thought process going on beyond simple trolling, you are actually being trolled. Blatantly trolled by a very long time, quasi-professional troll, and you just don't get it. [kuro5hin.org]