I got a buddy that fell for the scam. Had a vehicle up for sale and blah, blah, blah. Was going to send the money and the Western Union guy stopped him. He doesn’t talk much about it, but when he does, you can almost tell that he didn’t learn a thing from the experience. Like it was legit, but something out of the ordinary happend this one time.
He’s also fallen for just about every pyrimid scam you can think of. His house is chock full of crappy products that he “distributed” at one point or another. He has a $2500 vaccum that he purchased to “get in on the ground floor” and start his lucritive sales carreer*. He’s been screwed on so many “internet” investments that I lost count.
Heres what gets me: His mom has been in the banking industry forever, and he is a college graduate. He *really, really * should know better.
My wife says he’s just plain stupid. The evidence is certainly there. He hangs around with me…
*He tried sellin’ me one of these and I nearly physically threw him out of the house!
Found myself chatting at a work-do with one of a bunch of KPMG consultants we’d got in to advise on an IT problem. Turns out the guy had recently lost several grand trying to buy a designer handbag for his wife’s birthday on ebay. Despite never having even looked at ebay, I recognised where the story was going: he’d bid on it, lost and then been emailed that …
Nice bloke, but not exactly reassuring evidence of his general IT-stuff awareness.
I keep telling people on the Dope that they tend to run in very informed, educated, intelligent circles. One guy here tried to say that there must be someone on every block (or something or other) with a patent. I said he’s never been in a lower blue collar neighborhood, where most people don’t even know an engineer or scientist of any kind, period. The EEs aren’t generally partying with the assistant sod lay-ers.
And I’ve fallen for a scam when I was a teenager, and it was pretty dumb. This was when I sort of thought all humanity was in this thing together. Now I’d ask a lot more questions.
As it’s true that half the population is below the median intelligence, it’s also true that 20% of the population is in the 20% of the most gullible. If they don’t surf the tubes, and don’t have someone at home looking out for them, you’ve got yourself a scam, son.
Oh, and my dad is an MIT engineer, and has tried to sell Primestar satellite dishes, video games, and vitamins. Every time, as far as I can tell, he got suckered by the “If I just sell to 1/10th of the local population…” bit. He still has the bowling arcade game that is still labeled 50 cents. If he’d asked anyone under 30 at the time, they could have told him that was a non-starter.
He’s invested in I think three (maybe four) groups that took his money. As far as I know, every one was a legitimate idea, and not a pyramid at all, but in one case the owner disappeared from North America, and in another, the owners of the brokerage (or whatever) simply transferred money from one set of sub-clients to another group, because they refused to accept that a trader had won for his clients but lost for theirs. They are now in federal prison, but the money is still gone.
Some people just can’t resist hanging that back wheel out over the cliff edge. He’s one of them, unfortunately. Thank God they both had real white collar jobs to fall back on.
My father in law is the most trusting man alive. he KNOWs that all people are inherently good and wish him no harm. About twice a year we have to gently explain to him that the guy trying to raise funds to haul ice bergs to saudi arabia, or the free carpet cleaning service isn’;t actually legit.
the hard part is watching his heart break as he realises that there are “bad” people out there…
FUCK… he was a kid in the ww 2 london bombings… he worked in a high security position with the british mail system (detected two IRA Letter bombs, and “held down” one from detonating until bomb squad got there- if he had let go, it would have gone off).
I wish I could “wise him up” with out destroying his insistance in the belief of inherant human goodness…
