*"Operation Echo Track, set up by Queensland police in February last year to monitor the transfer of funds to Nigeria, detected 134 victims of investment scams, fraud and corporate crime head acting Superintendent Brian Hay said today.
Queensland victims had lost at least $18 million, but worse, the majority continued losing money after being told by police they were the victims of scams…
“The biggest losses were incurred in the Nigerian investment scams, and only about 24 per cent of the people we contacted and told they were participating in this scam believed us,” Supt Hay said.
“So, 76 per cent continued to send millions of dollars after we told them they were participating in a scam.”*
Many of the victims were well-educated, including doctors, lawyers, engineers and professors."
Greed, like sexual arousal, is capable of subduing rational thought in a sleeper hold and keeping it there until the reality of what they face comes along and clouts them upside the head with a tree.
Such stupidity knows no educational background or income bracket.
A co-worker of Mr. K’s just told him his mother won a lottery in Jamaica ($23M). Is anyone aware of a scam like that? This guy is ready to quit his job because his mom is going to share the winnings with him.
Those lottery scams are pretty common, too – both via E-Mail and regular snail mail, in fact! (I received a snail mail scam like this, informing me that I was a lottery winner in a lottery I never entered in Sweden.)
I get a lot of these, besides the regular Nigerian scams (which now purportedly come from all over, including the Philippines, South America, etc). The ones I get are mostly from the UK, but I have received a few from elsewhere.
Well, two things come to my mind. First is that greed makes everyone stupid.
Second, as the Amazing Randi likes to point out in regards to “psychic” frauds and faith healers, intelligence and education alone are no defense against being fooled, and can even make you easier to manipulate. You need to be educated in the form of deception at hand for an education to help against fraud ( I suspect the lawyers fall into the “greed makes you stupid” category for this reason, and I expect there are fewer of them ).
Don’t forget, too, that by the time people have started to sink large sums into these scams, the scammers may often have used their victims to clear fraudulent checks. And not all of these fraudulent checks get stopped. In some ways, it can be like gambling: “I’d already gotten back my initial investment from that one account they managed to clear out for me, so now I know they’re trustworthy, and I’ll get even more money back from larger buy-ins.”
Doesn’t change that there’s a huge dose of self-delusion there, just that it’s not always completely self-delusion. Many of the long-time victims will be basing their expectations of renumeration upon having gotten something back already from the scammers.
I watched this episode, and couldn’t beleive it either. I did find it interesting that when they went to Africa and trapped some of the scammers in sting operations, these guys weren’t living it up on these millions they steal, but they share the money around. The whole community’s livelihood relies on these illegal enterprises.