Fools still falling for the Nigerian scams
It just staggers me to read that there are people stupid enough to fall for the old Nigerian email scams (as well as a description of the workings of the “419″ scams, this site has some pretty funny stuff about baiting the scammers). According to Queensland police, some $7m plus has been handed over by Queenslanders alone in the last couple of years.
What is that saying about fools and their money?
February 1st, 2006 at 8:49 pm
It’s is a combination of greed and foolishness methinks. But we can’t really be hard of people for being fools - it’s hardly their fault. Besides, I wonder how much of that 7 million is made up of elderly people.
February 2nd, 2006 at 4:20 am
It still amazes me. I responded to one in a moment of boredom and exchanged a few emails. All was going well until I requested an air ticket to Nigeria to check that it was all legitimate.
February 5th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Who falls for these scams? You’d be surprised!!!
I posted this on my own blog yesterday (tektimes):
Tonight I heard on Reshet-Bet radio that the editor of Shaa Benleumit Eranski Kurel has fallen victim to a Nigerian scheme by someone posing as Arafat’s wife. (How can someone this dumb be an editor of a radio show?) I looked a little on the web and found doroninisrael.blogspot.com where he made a comment that Nigerian scheme victims deserve it. I felt the need to add a comment, and figured it may be a good way to finally start my blog.
I say more power to the Nigerian scammers–if they can get crooked dumb fools to give them their money, they deserve it.
Basically the way I see it, a person who actually agrees to a deal as “I’m so desperate so transfer my $10M and I’ll give you $1M” is pretty corrupt to begin with–that is not a fair transaction–Western Union charges like $20 to wire money. So some dumb dude who gets some email deserves to get Millions to help some poor soul transfer money? Besides, it should be clear to anyone that if anyone needs to do things this way, then something must not be so perfectly on the “up and up” in the deal.
So these crooked, greedy, dumb victims do deserve all that’s coming to them. The Nigerians are just teaching them a lesson in life–they should thank them for the learning experience. What’s $3000 for a bit of “life-education” that you need to use common sense and that you don’t get something for nothing in this world.
Tek.