Tururut
Elite Baiter
Joined: 13 Jun 2011
Posts: 1597
Location: Lost in translation
|
Posted:
Sun Nov 13, 2011 11:55 am |
|
In my country, Spain, there has been fo years a moral of "If you can make money without working, you're the man". In fact, scammers have traditionally been regarded as smart guys, and often looked at with a mixture of admiration and repulse, and usually victims are regarded as "greedy fools who deserve their ill-luck". Luckily this is starting to change, but I'm not here to rant about my country, but to explain something that looks like a clear ancestor of 419 scams: The uncle's tale (El cuento del tío.
Since not many years ago, Spain was a country that sent lots of migrants to Latin America; therefore it was not uncommon to have an uncle or distant relative in Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela...
The scam would run the following way: a guy dressed in black would approach you and tell you that his uncle, who was living in Latin America had died suddenly and left him a large sum of money [any bells ringing?] and that he had to collect it in Argentina, but did not have the money to travel there [Are you sure you don't know this tune?]. Then he said, that if you could borrow him the money for the ship (or plane) ticket, once he was back here, he'd return it to you plus a nice part of the inheritance.
Of course, there was only one payment involved, but a ship (or plane) ticket to Latin America could be equivalent to most of the savings of a working-class family.
This kind of scam lost most of its popularity in Spain after the sixties, but the expression "Cuento del tío" is still alive in Latin America as a rough sinonym of "scam". |
_________________ x28
Parti Boi. x2 x3 Xmas Parti 2012 Lagos-Natitingou, Lagos-Parakou-Kandi, Benin City- S4fari Hotel Kano A 419 picked me up, took my bag and ran away - have did a lot for Gomer but nothing good come out, every time different trip and they always mess up at last, why? Benin Republic mess up, Kano state in Nigeria mess up, Safari Camp also mess up - am really ashamed of my self in street
My wife divorce our marraige because I failed to provide proper maintenance of the family. |
|