In the online comment sections for news articles, some shill always posts
an ad: My Neighboor’s ex wife is making x amount from home.
Or: My sister in law’s mother works 10 hours per week making x amount.
They want you to believe their schtick and go to the website for more info.
Why not say, “I’m making x amount from home”. Why is it they think by saying,
“my neighboor’s ex wife” makes there scheme more believable? Wouldn’t first person testimonials be more convincing?
From a strictly word usage perspective, it makes some sense; otherwise you’d just say your neighbor, since both halves of a couple who live nearby are your neighbors.
Why they’d think that a neighbor’s ex-wife would be a positive endorsement, I don’t have a clue.
“Friend of a friend” testimonials are traditional in urban legends. The spammers are mimicking the form.
It makes sense in person because the “shill” comes off as unbiased.
"My neighboor just won $50,000"
But posted in the comment section of a NY Times article? It comes off as a
sham from the beginning.
People tend to exaggerate or brag when talking about themselves. If talking about someone else, you’re less likely to stretch the truth.
Also, by saying “neighbor’s ex-wife”, they may be trying to relate to a certain audience (female, recent financial shake-up) that they believe may be more likely to fall for the scam.
Maybe the idea is to make the spam sound more realistic?
By citing a specific person (“my ex-neighbor made a fortune”), it sounds more realistic than just saying “somebody” or “a guy in a bar”.
And citing just yourself (“I made a fortune myself”) , it sounds like boasting, and is less convincing.
Or maybe I’m over-analyzing this to death 
People who fall for these scams obviously don’t analyze anything, and maybe the people who write the scams don’t either…since it’s just a statistical thing for them. (i.e send out a million scam-mails,and you are pretty likely to get, say, 50 answers, no matter how the scam is described)
in fact, it would be interesting to know if anybody has researched this. Say, all those Nigerian scams…is there any data on the rate of reply vs the number of emails sent out?