Woman Admits Sending $400K To Nigerian Scammer 857
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 (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!"
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!
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: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.
Some people you can't help (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:2, Interesting)
Or maybe she's a con herself. Perhaps she wired the money to some Swiss account and is using this opportunity to cash in on her 'tragic' story. Oh, nevermind. She's a reverend. She couldn't have made this story up.
Re:Wrong crowd (Score:3, Interesting)
Vegas works this same way.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:3, Interesting)
No, most likely 0 people are of average intelligence. And, no 50% aren't necessarily below either.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Teaching Critical Thinking Skills (Score:3, Interesting)
Thinking critically and asking questions seems to be out of fashion these days. It scares me that this woman might be in charge of a life somewhere...
One of the best things that we did in high school did was to have units on "Critical Thinking."
We were given real consumer ads to "deconstruct" by answering questions (e.g., "The ad says that the coffee is 'mountain grown.' Explain why this does/doesn't make a difference"). We even had the assignment of coming up with a misleading ad ourselves to drive home the point.
I guess liberal, Midwestern "Outcome Based" educators in the US Educational system do some good after all...
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Interesting)
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. :)
The underlying problem is that the Nigerian scammers may be smart, but they are not productive. They aren't making the world richer or better; they're just diverting value other people have generated.
From an evolutionary perspective, scammers are parasites on their own species. I don't know how much it happens in the real world, but I've seen simulations where self-parasitization causes species to go extinct. The parasite genes become enormously successful for a period, until the parasites crowd out the non-parasites, causing a drastic population crash.
So if you really want to support evolution here, you should be for sterilizing the scammers for sure, and possibly the people who fall for them.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I'm amazed (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps he still doesn't know.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:3, Interesting)
If they pay by check, refuse to cash the excessively large check and insist that they give you one for the exact amount. If they pay electronically, refund their payment and insist that they pay you the exact amount. (PayPal and any other reasonable payment system will allow you to refund a payment in such a way that if the payment ends up being fraudulent, you still lose nothing, like not cashing a bogus check.)
Of course you're still vulnerable to losing merchandise to an exact bogus payment, but the thing that really hurts with the charge back scam is that you lose not only the merchandise but also the change. Protection from regular old bad payments is another more difficult topic.
Re:many people wrongly define greed (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely. I guess what I was trying to convey is that greed exceeds in quantity the natural evolutionary impulse. I'm not sure if there's a qualitative difference though. How many times have people said about others (usually obscenely rich others) "Don't they have enough already?".
To put it another way, I guess I'm saying that maybe "greed" defines a behaviour not a motivation for that behaviour.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:3, Interesting)
I know.
My father (Afghani) had 13 siblings. Two of them died. And they were rich down there. (Before the Russians and Americans came to fight each other.)
On the other hand, a good friend of mine, born and raised here in Germany, was the only child of her parents, which is even above average according to statistics (0.8 children per family).
But somehow, I fail to see the relation to my comment. :)
Re:I'm amazed (Score:3, Interesting)
My brother almost got tricked by one of these scams, not because of greed, but because he was trying to rent a room in his house, and thought he was helping some cute girl from England.
Myself and his roommate (also a long time friend of his) were both wary that it was a scam (mostly because it was taking so long for her to move over, and also because her "excuses" as to why she couldn't move over yet didn't make any sense in context). Finally when he got the "check" in the mail with obvious spelling mistakes in the company name, and from a bank in the middle of nowhere in the midwest, he had to admit he'd been strung along for almost 2 months. Luckily he never lost a dime.
If he had been scammed, it would have been based on his compassion or pride, rather than greed.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:2, Interesting)
The basic rule of any con is that "You can't cheat an honest person".
Unless you're the church, of course.
Naw, churches are rarely dealing with honest people. They specialize in fooling sinners into believing they have wave a magic wand and all their sins will go away...
"Don't worry about it! Your sins have already been paid for by someone else, two thousand years ago! Enjoy your free lunch!"
Re:I'm amazed (Score:3, Interesting)