It always completey blows my mind that people, without a gun to their head, will give strangers bank and credit card information, or forgodsake, their cash. Unless and only unless these are elderly folks who have half lost their mind, they deserve it. I suppose I might, just maybe get sucked into giving some poor sap ten bucks when he looks at me all teary eyed and says it's for gas and he's stranded, and he promises to pay me back, but I'll kiss it goodbye straight away. Anything more than that will be a charitable donation that I know will get to where it's supposed to go. Anything less goes to the rubbies.

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I had actually heard of that, but omg how fucking stupid do you have to be to GO TO ANOTHER COUNTRY like that?

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what if they were offering you lots of intoxicants and out of print Interpol tracks? or if it were a particularly sternum-fetish-worthy Nigerian scammer?

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They can spend some of that money to COME HERE where I can see them in person.

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....so you're saying Jimbo's an american 419er?

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I find it hard to believe a Nigerian is able to sweet talk an American to come visit him. Even if you believe this scam, Americans usually just throw money at problems instead of take an active role in anything. People are afraid to drive to the local grocery store these days, let alone fly to Nigeria.

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I don't think his nationality is what made the difference in this case though- it was that HE WAS OLD.

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I disagree. I think "greedy and really fucking stupid" are the operative keywords here.

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The object of the scam is not to appeal to the sense of helpfulness of the victim, it's to appeal to their sense of avarice.

That and their utter fucking stupidity, of course.

I remember it amazed me at first when I found out, a year or two ago, that it was actually Nigerians behind the Nigerian scams at all. Since they'd asked for bank account information, I had assumed it was random l33t h4x0rz just looking to e-rape people's accounts with that info and little or nothing else. Nasty, yes, but a bloodless crime at least.

Then I found out from scammer-baiting sites that, yeah, those really ARE Nigerians, which was amazing enough. But now finding out that they don't even USE the bank number info - that it's just a leader to let them know they've got a live one on the hook to entice close for physical violence and robbery... jesus.

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I think what's even worse is that people haven't caught onto this scam yet and it's bringing in MILLIONS into Nigeria, or so the Secret Service site reported.

and that right there is disturbing that there's really THAT many people falling for it.

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There are 290 million people in the USA alone. When you consider that a single score may be anywhere from $5,000 on the low end to $100,000 on the high end, it's not real hard to see that adding up to millions of dollars fairly rapidly.

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