Nigerian Official Blames The Victims Of Nigerian 419 Advance Fee Scams
from the blame-the-victim dept
It still amazes us that people still fall for so-called Nigerian advance-fee 419 scam emails. I'd actually noticed that I'd stopped getting such emails offering me millions for helping smuggle gold out of the country, but in the last week there's been a new bunch of them -- and apparently people still fall for them. According to a Nigerian diplomat in Australia, he's just as amazed, and thus thinks the victims are equally to blame and deserve jailtime. He claims that the government "frowns" on these scams, and spends plenty of time trying to track down the scammers -- but we've been reporting on Nigerian gov't claims for years and years and they never seem to get very far in stopping the scammers. But, still, he claims that the victims are equally at fault.While it's true that most of these scams prey on people's greed (they're basically roping people into "stealing" money), it's a bit extreme to claim they should be thrown in jail for being conned. If you read a book like Drake's Fortune, which describes a similar scam nearly a century ago that was incredibly effective, you realize how easily people are fooled into these things. And we've even seen cases where victims still believe the scammers after they've lost everything and the whole scam has been explained to them. That's how thoroughly convincing these scams can be.
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Filed Under: 419, advance fee, blame, nigeria, scams
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Does this mean I'm not gonna get my money back??!!
Dang~!
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You can't cheat an honest man (W. C. Fields)
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Re: You can't cheat an honest man (W. C. Fields)
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Re:
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Re: Re:
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Drake's scam
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The victims deserve jail time?
I think the diplomat should have considered his words a bit more carefully because, really, they're way out of line. You just don't say things like that when you're representing your country.
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Re: The victims deserve jail time?
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Re: The victims deserve jail time?
As far as blaming the victims, what about elderly folks that get caught up in this kind of thing? They don't always know better. They think they are going to get compensated for helping someone, and all they have to do is forward a little money on the front end (as far as they know anyway). Now, I know a lot of people in churches are taught to believe in seed faith, and this plays on that faith. Do these people all deserve to go to jail? Maybe in exchange for the money, the Nigerians need to sit through about 10 years of southern baptist christian culture. They will want to kill themselves. Eureka, thats how we fix it.
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Re:
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A muppet is a muppet
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If you read the story carefully, you'll notice that there should have been alarm bells going off at three different sections. Two of them I caught, but that first one got by me.
Moral of the story, don't try to date people who are prettier than you.
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Not surprised...
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Suckers
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If it's to good to be true, then IT"S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
People are dumb, greed gets them every time
now if you want to make real money, send me $5 and I'll show you how to make millions.......
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Re:
He would say these people paid some stupid tax.
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Nigerian offical blames Victims
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Similiar to Democrats!
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I just thought I would add age-old lines to the mix.
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Fixed it for you....
by commonsense - Aug 24th, 2008 @ 5:58am
Once the scam is revelaed they still believe their party leaders!
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E-mail and critical thinking
Let's think about this: if someone on the street came up to you and said, "Hey lucky recipient, I'll give you $5 million if you give me $2,000." Would you give him the money or would you walk away, knowing it's a scam? Then how does receiving an e-mail make the message any different?
Then, there's the idea where the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. Which one of these is more likely:
1) You were selected in a random drawing to receive $5 million just by helping some foreign family. Even though you were selected as a winner, the e-mail you receive never mentions you by name and the message has been cc'ed to a number of other "lucky winners" whose e-mail addresses are similar to yours.
-OR-
2) You've received a spam e-mail from people who want to steal your money.
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scams
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A fool and his/her money
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Blame the churches
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many people are just stupid
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I tend to agree
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Re: I tend to agree
The person that said that e-mail makes people stupid, you are somewhat correct in the fact that e-mail is more personal than some moron on the street coming to you and saying that you won the lottery. For the people that fall for it, they think that if they are getting an e-mail, that person had to have known the address and sent it directly to them; not understanding how spam works.
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how innocent?
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@cak
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As long as humanity walks on this earth there will be people who scam and people who allow themselves to be scammed. I knew someone who actually had a large jug of snake oil on top of their refrigerator. I was 12, so I thought it was badass, but now when I reflect on it, that guy got bamboozled. He probably paid like $100 or $200 for that jug of snake oil with a dead snake in it, and it probably cost the guy who made it $3 in vineger and a little time finding a snake to kill.
You guys can psychoanalyze and place blame whereever you would like, but the truth is that this kind of thing has been around for many hundreds of years. This is just another facet to the "scam" industry and anyone who falls for it is stupid. But the people scamming are at fault too and should be dealt with when they are apprehended. Both parties are at fault; one for being naive and the other for taking advantage of that naivete.
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