"News Of The Weird" talks about Nigerian scams

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Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 8:54 am

The following from: http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/nw070527.html

Nigerian Internet scams were thought for years to be so transparently fraudulent that they would work only on the very gullible, who would send thousands of dollars overseas in the naive expectation of receiving millions in return. However, it was also too good to pass up for a professional money manager, the longtime treasurer of Alcona County, Mich., Thomas Katona, who admitted in court in January 2007 that he had lost $1.25 million of taxpayer money, plus his own life's savings, in a Nigerian scam. [Detroit Free Press, 1-18-07]

I wonder if Nigerian scammers are part of the Darwin Process. Maybe God put them here to help thin out the herd. Ya think? Wink

419Eater is my life Joined: 11 Jun 2005 Posts: 344

Theyre a little buried, but

thread about arrest here: linky
thread about conviction here: linky

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 9:26 am

BaldSpot wrote:

I wonder if Nigerian scammers are part of the Darwin Process. Maybe God put them here to help thin out the herd. Ya think? Wink

Yup, God certainly meant for someone's grandmother to lose every cent she had to a smooth talking scammer because she was lonely knew nothing about the internet; and the penniless mother of 3 certainly deserved to be taken in by what seemed to be a perfect work-at-home job, only to find herself facing money laundering and cheque kiting charges because she fell for a mule scam.

Sorry if this seems harsh, but making blanket statements about victims and how/why they fall for scams is fairly ignorant. The reasons are as individual as both the victims and the scammers.

419Eater is my life Joined: 11 Jun 2005 Posts: 344

^ I didnt even see that part of the OP, as soon as I saw the money manager bit, I quite reading and pulled the links.

@op - "thinning the herd" - are you serious?? There's lots of variants of the scams, some way more convincing than others. And, like SF posted, there's tons of reasons why a person might fall for them.

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 9:56 am

A serious suggestion to the OP to get educated on scams. Not all scams are that obvious. Have a read in the love scam forum, some of these scammers take weeks, sometimes months to even ask for money. If you are a lonely guy thinking you have met the love of your life, helping her out is not at all a strange idea, is it? What about charity scams? People open their emails and see pictures of dying children. The lads send the worst picture you can even imagine. Is it such a stupid thing to want to help the sick, the poor, the suffering? Sometimes scammers use websites of real charities, making their scam more legitimate.

The mere fact that you even posted that, makes me wonder how much you really know about these scams. I can imagine very well that people fall for scams on Ebay. A little while ago one of my own colleagues wanted to buy a motor off the internet. He is Italian and is not familair with Dutch habits. If alarm bells didn't start ringing when he told me during his break, he probably would have fallen for it. I can vouch that he is a very intelligent and careful man.

My best advice would be to get more educated about scams and how they are set up. It seems to me you have a bit of learning to do.

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 10:25 am

Since victims seem to be normally middle-aged or elderly, it is only logical to conclude that it is very probable that they have actually reproduced. If you consider gullibility an inheritable trait, it would have already been passed to their offspring, so the scammers would not be very effective instruments of natural selection, since they're not preventing the propagation of the involved genes.

Regarding love scams, this people already have problems finding suitable partners and therefore propagation of their genes should be of no concern. Your theory is interesting though.

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 10:32 am

I think the idea is very insulting to victims on fraud. I hate to see it on this forum.

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 10:38 am

BaldSpot's I wonder if Nigerian scammers are part of the Darwin Process. Maybe God put them here to help thin out the herd. Ya think? Wink

Unlike SF, DA and P, I tend to think that this remark of yours points to a very sick and sadistic way of thinking rather than absence of knowledge on 419 scams.

And please don't try to pass it off as an innocent attempt at humour - English may not be my first language but I recognise it for what it is -- an insultingly idiotic remark.

Mini rant over

edited to delete mapuche's name who's post (which I didn't read properly, sorry) is equally revolting

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 10:43 am

^^^ I couldn�t agree more.....I think it is generally a sign of disrespect to humanity to have the "they deserved it" attitude. NOBODY deserves to be stolen from, to be left in bankruptcy. I think compassion is one of the major achievements of our society nowadays, and you lack it in my opinion.....

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 10:45 am

The last person to propagate this braindead understanding of "Darwinism" for the intellectually challenged on a broader scale was Austrian and started WWII. I cannot honestly see the need for discussing such tripe here.

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