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."
Bill Engvall comes to mind (Score:4, Funny)
Here's your sign: L
Canada Bill Jones would be proud (Score:5, Insightful)
"It is immoral to allow a sucker to keep their money."
Re:Canada Bill Jones would be proud (Score:4, Funny)
The strange thing here is not that a fool and her money are soon parted but rather that the fool ever managed to get together with her money in the first place.
Awful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Awful (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Awful (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, 50% is a terrible return on a Nigerian scam. You should shop around some.
No, no, no... (Score:3, Funny)
Not exiled. Deported. To Nigeria.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (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: (Score:3, Insightful)
She clearly would have ignored the advice she is now giving.
Yes but at that time she would have had money and a goal to work towards. Now that she lost everything all she can shoot for is a little attention.
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!
Here is step 4. (Score:5, Funny)
4. ... Divorce husband and move away.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sad but true. In an effort to fight misogynist sexism, certain laws have become misandrist. For example, here in Brasil, it requires little evidence to send a man to jail if he is accused of rape. An angry girlfriend, for example, can have sex with the man, then go to the police, have an exam that shows they indeed had sex, and based on this have him arrested for rape (not necessary to prove the sex was forced). An impoverished man will then linger in the jail for months or years, waiting for the public att
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Vegas works this same way.
just to preempt all of the obvious comments (Score:4, Insightful)
yes, for most of us here on slashdot, this is incredibly brain dead, but in general, there is a problem with you if you blame the victim for a crime, no matter how foolish or stupid they acted
whether a rape victim for wearing revealing clothes, or a guy walking in a dangerous neighborhood at night, yes: you can attack the victim, but if you want to actually claim any moral highground (which many of you seem to assume with a withering condescending tone as you blame the victim), the person who bears 100% responsibility and accountability for a crime is the criminal themselves, and only the criminal, and no one else
using knowledge and care to avoid crime is of course an important aspect of any behavior, but just because someone fails to do this, for any reason, does not mean they share blame for being victimized: a transgression is a transgression is a transgression. no one ASKS to be victimized in such a horrible way
if you walk by the front door of a house, and the house is wide open, and no one is home, and in plain site is a stack of 20 dollar bills, you are 100% responsible and culpable if you take that stack of $20s. the person who left them there like that is, yes, pretty stupid. but they deserve zero blame. the criminal, ALWAYS the criminal is responsible for the trangressions that the criminal freely chooses to commit
any other opinion on the issue is, frankly, not morally or philosophically coherent
although, for some you then, by all means, heckle the woman who gave away $$00K, since some of you honeslty and openly claim no moral high ground
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.
your view of morality is logically incoherent (Score:3, Insightful)
which is worse?:
1. man falls asleep at wheel of truck, smashes into bus full of kids, kills 10. feels awful about it
2. man carefully watches bus route for weeks, carefully plotting and calculating exactly when to smash into bus to kill children. he kills 2 children. he feels bad he didn't kill more
#2 is absolutely many times more criminal than #1, even though he killed far less children. because of a magic concept which all legal codes understand: intent
any legal code in the world has a difference of unders
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.)
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.
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.
Re:your view of morality is logically incoherent (Score:4, Funny)
Re:lets follow your thought to the logical conclus (Score:5, Funny)
I think all this talk of Nigerian email scams is affecting you...
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.
Re:just to preempt all of the obvious comments (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see what's disturbing about assigning fault if you carry out an action which has obvious consequences.
The rest of your post is all completely irrelevant because it addresses points that I simply did not make. At no point did I ever state that the criminal should not be held responsible. He should. But if the victim did something that obviously leads to the crime being committed, then the victim is also at fault.
Blame is not something that needs to be portioned out so that it can add up to 100%. If you leave a stack of money out in plain view, and your neighbor takes it, then your neighbor is 100% guilty of theft as you say. However you are also 100% at fault for that theft, because you either knew or should have known the consequences of that action when you carried it out.
And the simple fact is that people like this woman do cause crime. Maybe you don't like it, but it's a fact. If everybody were smart enough to avoid these scams, then the scammers would not longer carry them out. Obviously this is not actually something that can be accomplished, so it's kind of a useless thing to know, but it's still true.
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.
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.
Nigerian scam 'victims' are criminals themselves (Score:4, Insightful)
Blaming the victim in this case is perfectly legitimate. Most long cons like this involve an appeal to the element of criminality on the part of the victim. Why would this woman think that she is entitled to pull millions of dollars worth of free money out of Africa?
The basic Nigerian scam depicts a corrupt official stealing money who 'needs your help'. To fall for it isn't just stupid, it's venal.
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!
Re:For those not reading TFA (Score:4, Funny)
A letter from President Bush without misspellings would be an obvious scam. Clever Nigerians.
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)
I blame her husband (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I blame her husband (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people think that there are things in this world which are more important than money... a couple of them being trust and love. I think if and when you figure this out you will be a lot better off.
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?
Some people you can't help (Score:3, Interesting)
If she spends here money on a scam (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure she would spend $10 on that:
http://www.despair.com/mis24x30prin.html [despair.com]
3-4 years to recover (Score:4, Insightful)
Call me amoral, but if she makes enough money that it only takes 3-4 years to get out of $400,000 in debt, I don't feel bad for her.
I'm sure there are people blowing a couple year-s salaries in Vegas every day... they only have slightly better odds then her at getting money and are just as gullible.
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
". . . her husband's retirement account. . ."
Sounds like, while it was legally 'her' money by virtue of the marriage, she wasn't necessarily the one who worked her whole life to build up that nest egg.
Still, I do feel sorry for her, even if she was kind of dumb, and for her husband (if he's still alive; I can't imagine he's still alive and allowed her to just empty their accounts; maybe he was brain damaged in an accident or otherwise out of the picture).
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.
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.......
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
Poor woman probably even hawked her banjo.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
Does that involve the ban of any reproduction for them? :)
If not, it's worthless.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, so that's why we don't reproduce!
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
You hit the nail exactly on the head.
Its not only sad, it seems to be a fundamental part of human nature. Witness the recent economic "meltdown". When the impulse to have that which you don't overpowers your common-sense - that's greed. People wanting to buy their own little mansion when common-sense tells you there is no way they can afford it? Greed. People wanting to push ridiculous loans on unsuspecting marks without thinking there would be repurcussions? Greed. Financiers buying "securitised" debt with one eye closed to the obvious flakiness of the underlying asset? Greed. Politicians and central bankers blithely greasing the wheels of this ridiculous machine by loosening regulation and increasing the money supply all the while trying to convince themselves and the public that its not all one big pyramid scheme? Greed.
For future reference:
Nothing comes out of nothing. Not energy and not money (defined here as actual, real purchasing power, not pieces of paper with funny symbols on it).
Out of interest, has anybody done any reading regarding the evolutionary basis of greed?
Evolution of greed (Score:5, Insightful)
Greed is beneficial as long as the greedy individual can keep what he or she obtains. Greedy individuals can better support their offspring, who generally share their greedy genes. The balance between greed and altruism basically depends on the general wisdom of society. The more altruistic people are, the more greedy people can benefit, but the less altruistic people are, the less they benefit from cooperation. A stable point is where there is just enough altruism and greed to consume all the available resources without too many people getting upset and changing the gene pool with a shotgun.
Re:Evolution of greed (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny thing is that Richard Dawkins argues in "The God Delusion" that altruism might be equally beneficial to the evolution of the species. And he *is* an evolutionary biologist who makes a very good case for that view.
I for one believe in the mix. Greed without altruism is just as useless as altruism without any greed.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not greed. It's avoidance of cognitive dissonance. Once people have some involvement in something, they tend to filter data which would make it untrue. It's the same thing that happens with militantly religious (or anti-religious) people; they gradually develop filters that allow them to preemptively exclude any data which might make them les comfortable with their amazing qualities and superiority.
It's hard to get someone to bite for a few hundred dollars on a scam -- but once you have that first part, it's very easy to keep getting more, because admitting that they were scammed would make them feel awful.
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. :)
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: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!
Re:I'm amazed (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Then what? (Score:5, Funny)
Then we sell the list to Nigeria?
Re:Then what? (Score:5, Funny)
Now that you mention it we might as well make a bit of cash. but Nigeria must pay upfront, I don't trust their credit rating.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
But she was definitely stupid to ignore *everyone's* advice. I feel sorry for her husband.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
The basic rule of any con is that "You can't cheat an honest person".
Except for the "starving children" scams that prey on a person's honesty. Lots of those, and they like praying on religious communities.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
ha! hilarious slip - "praying on religious communities"
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell that to the taxpayers who have just bailed out Wall Street...
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Funny)
The basic rule of any con is that "You can't cheat an honest person".
Unless you're the church, of course.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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: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.
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.
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!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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: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. :)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have a feeling if they had tri
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.
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.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but what if 98% of the people you meet say that the world is full of morons?
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.
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.
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
Re:I'm amazed (Score:4, Insightful)
To your point about stereotyping - one of the difficulties with fighting the stereotyping of religions is that the 'major' faiths (christianity, judaism, islam - lower case intentional) are dogma-based. It is very easy to stereotype a population that insists on jamming the basis for such stereotypes down everyone elses throats. I share a neighborhood with a bunch of jehovas' witnesses who insist that god wants them to keep knocking on my door and littering my mailbox, front walkway and car windshield with leaflets. Were I to stereotype them as being a bunch of people who spend their weekends littering other peoples homes and cars with leaflets, how far off the mark would I be? Would it be unfair of me? Most religious expression, in my experience, involves someone telling everyone around them, with great force and repetition, that things for which they have no actual proof are indeed true. If I generalize this behavior to religions in general, is that a stereotype, or in some way inappropriate?
Your pastor example wasn't terribly well-aimed, by the way - he was promoting sex among married christian couples. When your pastor starts encouraging sex between people who love each other, regardless of race, marital status or gender, I'll be impressed. The stereotype of christians isn't that sex is dirty, it's that sex with someone the church doesn't approve of is dirty - which appears to be the case here, no? Am I stereotyping when I suggest your pastor would be horrified at the thought of two men having sex every day for a week, or is that simply the truth?
I'd love an example of what we might find if we 'stopped stereotyping religions'. The problem is, if you look past the stereotypes and the denial of reason - and I'd be willing to look past those to some degree, because as you point out, we don't have all the answers on the 'science' side of the house either - you end up with intolerance and vitriol. Think I'm overgeneralizing? Try being gay in a christian, jewish or muslim community and see how you fare. The Anglican church tried to open up and tolerate gays and lesbians (I give them capitals for that) and what happened? The church is disintegrating.
Stereotypes can be helpful too - I was raised catholic. By associating priests with pedophilia (truly a stereotype, as pedophile priests are a tiny minority of the priesthood) I desensitized myself to the catholic symbols and mechanisms of oppression. Now, instead of seeing a 'father' I see a 'creepy pervert'. Such stereotyping helped flush the 'papal poison' from my memetic scheme.
Now, why again should we stop stereotyping religions and embrace them? I'll consider it when they stop stereotyping and start embracing everyone who does not believe as they do. When they stop mudslinging and worse, trying to deny the full, legitimate humanity of others based on *their* dogma, I'll grant them some respect. Until that time, given the chance, I will sling mud and take every shot, cheap or fair, that I can - I am still playing more fairly than they do.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The average person does have better common sense than that. Probably less than one in one thousand people falls victim to these scams (number pulled out of my ass, but I'd bet that it's far less than that), meaning that the vast majority of people have the basic smarts to avoid them.
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:I'm amazed (Score:4, Insightful)
Until you get paid, it's not a high-yield investment; it's a high-risk investment.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5)
Re:I'm amazed (Score:4, Insightful)
[...] I worked with the general public (retail sales, waiting, bartender) and by doing this it was made painfully clear that most people out there are fucked In the head [...]
You think that's scary? At some point, you will realize that you are one of those people.
Every couple of years reality will whack me across the face with a 2x4 and I'll realize that I've spent my whole life being an idiot about something.
As far as I can tell, that happens eventually to everybody except people who are crazy and/or dumb enough that they never notice their flaws. So now I've come to kinda sorta welcome the 2x4. It hurts like hell, but at least it's a chance to improve.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Nigerian scam is no more of a scam than... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Nigerian scam is no more of a scam than... (Score:4, Insightful)
Her thought process is exactly the same as a gambling addict. The ethics of casino's and Nigerian scammers are different, but she belongs at Gamblers Anonymous.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe there is a Nigerian scammer out there that is just as stupid as the people sending the money.
Dear Prince Nbumbu,
I am willing to assist you in transferring the sum of $20m in return for 10%, and will forward the $400,000 advance to you in the coming week. In order to progress this transaction I first need you to wire me $100,000 in processing fees. Further details to follow.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Tattooed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:She had it coming (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, they see their money right away after they've securitized the loan into a credit deriviative and sold it on the international investment market. Then it is the next sucker's problem.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's actually even worse than that. If the actions she *thought* she was taking were real, *she* would be committing a crime.
It's really, really, really hard to feel bad for someone who loses a lot of their own money while attempting launder money, steal from foreigners and foreign governments, and commit usury.
The real victim here is the husband.