When you read about people who have been scammed, it becomes obvious that in many cases, the victims either:
knew what was going to happen to them
or
actually assisted in being scammed.
take the typical victim of a financial con: -the con man promises returns FAR above the market average-so why does he solicit YOu to invest? He’d be better off borrowing the money and keeping everything!
or the victims of shadey real estate deals-if you don’t hire a qualified real estate lawyer to advise you, you will likely be victimized.
So, do the victims of conmen really participate in their own screwing?
Essentially, the theory is that a “mark” is ideal because they’re more than willing to suspend normal common sense or practical street smarts at the opportunity at a big, effortless score. You can’t get something for nothing, but greed will often prevail over experience when a prime “opportunity” comes along.
Obviously, con men lie and distort evidence and are generally not particularly ethical people, but I’ve always been under the impression that con men typically don’t resort to force because their MO is full-scale psychological manipulation, and if a victim decides to second guess their involvement in a scam, the con man’s only alternatives are (a) try to convince them otherwise, through flattery, fear, or some other means, or (b) walk away.
It is much easier to swindle someone who is dishonest.
An honest man asks honest questions, and does not feel that getting something for nothing, or even close to it is a good idea. So, yes, as far as it goes, trying to get the best of it all sets you up for loosing your shirt. That doesn’t mean you can’t loose your shirt honestly, but you won’t be quite so easy a target for con men, if you aren’t trying to get more than a reasonable return for your effort, or money.
Which is a good point, some cons are good enough to fool people who are honest. Perhaps they are honest and naive, but honest people can sometimes be fooled.
However I think Lipwig also sums it up well that for the most part the easiest cons are done with the willing participation of the mark:
Its a little harsh to assume that everybody who is scammed is dishonest. Some scams require dishonesty on the part of the victim - IIRC the Nigerian email scam involves illegally sending money out of Nigeria. Others involve getting an unrealistic return on investment, but that’s not dishonest, that’s practically the American dream. Religious hucksters (perhaps they can’t be called scammers since it’s legal) will promise that God will return your investment (donation) one hundredfold. A common scam is a fee to find a high paying job in another country. Some are phony charities. Lots of scammers target old people. Fortune tellers tell people they have to buy expensive magic charms to avoid diseases or other problems. Gullibility is the biggest flaw scam victims have. We’ve been taught that trusting people is an important virtue, but scammers make it so we can’t afford to trust people we don’t know well.
I have a close family member who lost a huge amount of money to a scam. Suffice it to say that she is an honest person, not seeking any extraordinary gains, and yet is a person who was extremely vulnerable when she got hooked into the wrong crowd.
Simply put, she was throughly manipulated by evil people who had no concern whatsoever for her well-being. Although you or I might not fall for their pitches, but there are some who unfortunately do, and I can assure you that it is not because the victims want to have all their money stolen.
I think to some extent they do. A good many cons play on a person’s greed - and his greed overcomes his common sense. Take for instance the email that says you won the lottery in Ireland (I just got that one.) Doesn’t occur to you that you never *played *the lottery in Ireland? (My Mom, a bank teller, tells a sad tale of an older man who was taken in by this scam.)
How was it theft? The criminals did not physically take the check; they defrauded RyJae into sending them a check. Fraud, scam, con, whatever you want to call it, the bad guys made representations that they were going to do something, got the money, and blew town. I’m not seeing how that’s really any different from what a con man does.
No. The crims took a $500 check and used it to forge a $5000 check. Had **RyJae ** been taken for only $500 I could see your point, one always takes a chance of getting ripped with online purchases, but in this case the $4500 extra dollars would qualify as theft, since RyJae didn’t send them a check for $5000, rather $500.
I think this is a legitimate observation, but not an absolute one.
The elderly are often the victims of scams both because their faculties are not as sharp and because scammers often rely on claims about “new” things of which the elderly may have heard but not understood.
The un(der)educated are often the victims of scams because they simply do not have enough information to evaluate a scam.
Another victim who might not qualify as too greedy or too stupid would be an investor who was simply promised a good return–not an incredible return–on an investment. I could see a scam artist getting hold of money by going through the motions of a legitimate deal, then simply grabbing the cash and running. Alternatively, I occasionally read about a financial advisor who does (more or less) honest work for years, then decides to take a particularly large investment and duck out. I do not think that his victims were particularly greedy or stupid.
On the other hand, pigeon drops, Nigerian scams, and a host of other grifts are frequently run on people who should have enough knowledge and experience to know better, but who let their greed fog their judgment. It was almost ten years between the first time I heard of a pigeon drop (just before high school) and when I finally figured out how it worked, because it simply never made sense that the finder of the money would not simply take it to the police–the honest thing to do. Putting up “earnest money” on top of not going to the police made less sense. Not too long after I finally figured out how it worked (by realizing how powerful greed is), I learned that a security guard at a shopping center where I worked (a guy in management, not some kid who was hired and given a bullet to put in his gun) had been taken in a pigeon drop. His job was to make sure that customers at the mall were not harmed by exactly that sort of scam.
There are also fortune tellers/palm readers and the like who scam the desperate by providing seances, because the “mark” desperately wants to believe that their loved one is in a better place after all.
In this way, the “mark’s” need assists the scammer. Without that need, the scam may not have been possible.
More than that research has shown that we’re more likely to be trusting or gullible as we get older. I cant give a cite sorry, it was an article in New Scientist - the theory is its a survival trait I think, in that as you get older you’re more dependent on others so trust becomes more useful than being too suspicous.
After all if you lend someone your car because their car broke down and they’ll be right back, you’ve been conned, but theres nothing dishonest involved.
I suspect people are more talking about cons where a part of the mark is it needing to be secret because you’re getting something you dont deserve.
Thats only one kind of con though, many cons rely on peoples good nature, the obvious one being that reverse Nigeria one, where the person is asked to sell something, and take a check thats larger than the amount needed to pay for it and then pass on the change to the conman. If the person is dishonest/distrusting they keep the check till its cleared and find out its a con when the check bounces and only lose the item they sold at worst - they only get completely ripped off if they’re honest and actually pass on the difference as requested, which apparently happens to a pretty reasonable number of people.
Conmen will cheat honest people out of money if the opportunity presents itself but they generally prefer to con victims who are themselves dishonest.
1 - It helps the conman’s self-image to think his victim was guilty.
2 - It helps distract the victim from his own vulnerability if he thinks he’s cheating somebody else.
3 - Victims who thought they were doing something dishonest are less likely to report the con to the police.
I was going to start another thread about this, but I think this is a good place to mention it. Not all victims of a conman are ‘actively assisting’ by trying to get something for nothing. Sometimes the scammer is manipulating the victim’s concern or grief for a significant other. Take this stunt, as described in the e-mail I get from Military Report and on the Red Cross website:
So, sometimes the scammer is just really very good at being slime.
Dragnet 1967 featured one of the few scams that preyed on peoples desires to be helpful- It was cloudy in Los Angeles, Joe and Gannon were working daywatch out of the bunko division, boss was Captain Miller- guys pose as fake bank inspectors trying to catch a dishonest teller by having old people withdraw money from their accounts (Gus from Leave it to Beaver withdrew his burial money ) to somehow try and trap the teller. But that one sort of plays on a persons desire to get acclaim perhaps- and don’t ask me why the bank couldn’t just pull out money from the vault to do this.
) to somehow try and trap the teller. But that one sort of plays on a persons desire to get acclaim perhaps- and don’t ask me why the bank couldn’t just pull out money from the vault to do this.