All it takes is one person falling for it...

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...and the "Nigerian"-style scammers make a profit and continue to flood the Internet with spam. I feel sorry for this woman who was conned out of $400,000, but I'm also angry at her. Because of the existence of the tiny minority of people who fall for this, the rest of us have to put up with those "Dearest one of God" emails phishing for our bank account numbers.

I feel this way about a lot of things: because a small minority of people steal, everyone has to lock their doors. Makes one want to retreat to an isolated utopian commune or a gated community.

Comments

grishnash said…
OK, so I can see some poor unwary person newly introduced to the internet send a few hundred bucks to these scammers, and maybe even getting sucked into repeating this a few times.

But, I have a really hard time seeing how absent some underlying mental condition someone would continue to do this even when being warned by friends, family members, bankers and law enforcement that it was a scam.

Incidentally, there is now a web site up asking for online donations to recoup her losses. I have a large sum of cash that I'd like to donate to this, but unfortunately I can't, unless you'd like to help me first with an upfront payment of a modest amount of $10 for online processing of fees associated with the deposit of such a large amount in her account.
7:32 AM, November 20, 2008
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