I do a bunch of stuff related to scams on YouTube (lately, including interviewing victims of various different kinds of scams). One of the most frequent comments I see is (words to the effect) “I can’t believe anyone would be stupid enough to fall for this shit” (occasionally expressed more like “If anyone is stupid enough to fall for this, they deserve to be a victim”).
I don’t think ‘stupid’ is nearly a good enough answer for why people become victims of scams; Vulnerability can be caused by a very wide range of factors beyond the control of the victim, such as clinical depression, bereavement, dementia, but also, physical or mental exhaustion, temporary anxiety, and other stuff that everyone experiences and deals with. Put simply, even the best people are not always at their best.
One other thing to consider is that, let’s say you (reading this) agree with me that 99.9% of all scams you ever saw were utterly laughable and transparent - and only 0.1% seem remotely plausible…
If we were to compare notes, I suspect we would find that, whilst we agreed on the proportion, we were not actually talking about the same 0.1% - everyone has different things in their head, and not everyone has the same experience of the world outside of them - the 99.9% aren’t all wasting their time pushing scams that are universally implausible to everyone - they’re simply going to hook * someone else who isn’t you.*
Scammers will exploit any vulnerability - that email about the Nigerian widow who lost her wealthy engineer husband to cancer, and is now herself dying of cancer, and wants to bequeath her fortune to you, a stranger on the internet may seem laughably obvious to you where you are right now.
But put yourself in the position of someone who really has just lost their loved one to cancer, and, say, whose business is also failing and has massive debt, and for whatever reason, has also never heard of this kind of scam before. From that uniquely vulnerable viewpoint, the email about the widow’s legacy might appear as a gleaming ray of desperately desired hope.
And that’s how it works - the scams don’t have to be plausible to everyone - they just have to hit home once, by chance, to someone who is in the exact predicament and state of mind to fall victim to this specific story
Scammers send out millions of leads in the hope of hitting home like that.