My friend is scamming people out of thousands of dollars. What should I do?

[Loach]

@Skammer

He’s not selling the filtration units himself; he’s selling a financing system to the people who sell the filtration units.

So not only is he not doing anything illegal; it doesn’t even sound like he’s doing anything dishonest assuming his financial product works as it is supposed to.

Now if it were me, I would be bothered by the fact that my product was making it easier for my customers to defraud other people. But I don’t see anything you can or should do about it, indirectly by helping people not to get scammed by the filter scheme in the first place.

Perfect thread/user name combination. Always go right to the expert.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

Does the friend himself realize that the stuff doesn’t work?

If he genuinely thinks it does - or even that it might - then I don’t think he’s any sort of scammer and don’t see any reason at all to cut ties with him.

[Moonlitherial]

@Fear_Itself

You say that like it is a bad thing.

The problem is the more we protect stupid gullible people from specific threats the more stupid and gullible people we create.

What we need is to teach people to question authority, to doubt, to fact check.

[Living_Well_Is_Best_Revenge]

Caveat emptor.

[running_coach]

@Moonlitherial

The problem is the more we protect stupid gullible people from specific threats the more stupid and gullible people we create.

What we need is to** teach people to question authority**, to doubt, to fact check.

That’s part of the problem. They question the authority and listen to the scam artist. And listen to his facts and the made-up testimonials.

[DrDeth]

@Ravenman

I know someone whose mother was taken for hundreds of thousands of dollars by hucksters. Was this woman a sucker? Was she stupid? Was she one for the Darwin awards?

No, she was suffering from early stage dementia, and was intimidated into not telling anyone about her losses.

Every time I hear people talking about people who buy into scams “need to learn a valuable lesson” or whatever, I think of the helpless person who lost damn near every penny she had saved for her retirement, just like a responsible person is expected to do.

Yes. Mostly scamsters don’t prey on the greedy, they prey on the elderly.

tell your “freind” that he’s scamming people.