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Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 1:15 am

Hi,

Just cut this from an article in a Canadain Business mag and thought I'd share a part of it.

When I read things like this it casts away any ethics questions I may have had at one time......Onward to Simba you $%$^&%^

"The offer - which is usually passed along in broken English and riddled with grammatical errors - sees most Internet users simply hit delete. Still, an average of 10 Canadians each month continue to fall for it and get soaked for as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars.

June was a relatively slow month for victims of the letter scam in Canada, with four people reporting losses of a total of almost $73,000.

But in May, 11 Canadians fell for the letter scam and were taken for a total of almost $571,000, while a U.S. victim reported they lost $200,000 in a scam with Canadian links.

"Is it greed? I don't think so. Is it pure ignorance? Maybe. Is it possible that the Canadian citizens are not well informed?" said Cpl. Louis Robertson, a spokesman for Phonebusters.

"Why does it work? I don't know. I've been with the RCMP for 21 years and I'm still looking at the same email messages - and they still work."

Not quite a Newb Joined: 29 Jun 2009 Posts: 46

Always remember, its never against the law to waste someone else's time.

Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 1:41 am

Its a combination of ignorance And pure stupidity..

That and the fact that people really really want to believe we live in a nice world. So some of these people don't think anyone out there would rip them off.

Thats just my 2 cents on it..

edit.. Not to mention some of these people are really desperate for money.. Some of these people have truly horrific problems going on in their life.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

Jack The Tripper wrote:

its never against the law to waste someone else's time.

[pedantic-git] Wasting police time is a crime in the UK [/pedantic-git]

The UK OFT produced a report (December 2006) giving the total amount of money lost to scams, including 419.

OFT wrote:

On the basis of the research, we estimate that UK consumers lose about
£3.5 billion to scams each year. This includes estimated annual losses of
£1.17 billion to holiday club scams, £490 million to high risk investment
scams, £420 million to pyramid and get-rich-quick schemes and £260
million to foreign lottery scams. To put this into perspective, the total
annual direct financial loss to the economy of £3.5 billion equates to
about £70 per annum for each adult living in the UK.

...

Based on the research findings, we estimate that 6.5 per cent of the UK
adult population – 3.2 million people – fall victim to scams every year.
Of these, we estimate that more than one million people fall victim to
premium rate telephone prize scams (although this is likely to have fallen
with the introduction of a tougher Code of Practice by ICSTIS, the
premium rate services regulator), 480,000 to pyramid and chain letter
scams, 400,000 to bogus holiday club scams, and 380,000 to prize
draw scams.

...

• Foreign lottery scams cost the UK public an estimated £260 million a
year.
• An estimated 140,000 adults fall victim to these scams every year.
• The mean loss per victim is £1,900 (the median loss was £42).

...

• African advance fee fraud/foreign money making scams cost the UK
public an estimated £340 million a year.
• An estimated 70,000 adults fall victim to these scams every year.
• The mean loss per victim is £5,000 (the median loss was £2,858), the
second highest across all the scams examined.

...

• Loan fee scams cost the UK public an estimated £190 million a year.
• An estimated 110,000 adults fall victim to these scams every year.
• The mean loss per victim is £1,810 (the median loss was £376).