Nigerian Prince

It has long amazed me that so many people will expose their life savings to strangers.   I recently read an article that the “Nigerian Prince” is estimated to have taken in $2.5 Billion.

Of course, it is not just foreign royalty, it can be the guy in the pickup truck telling you you need a new roof. I bumped into a plumber once who demanded that I replace all the illegal plumbing in the business I was operating or he would have to close me down.   Yes, I kicked him out. No, my business was not closed.

That guy probably really is a prince by now with that much dough.

Yeah it's weird. My wife is sort of a social worker and she and her coworkers basically almost had to tie an older lady up to stop her from continuing to give all of her money to a scammer. She gave him a ton of money even though her grandkids and everyone else was telling her it was a scam. So nuts.

There have been scams since the dawn of time, I assume. 40 years ago my mother-in-law went bankrupt "buying angels" from a tv evangelist. She had to move in with us to live and still would sneak sending in money to buy more angels. Her perceived reward wasn’t to get rich, but rather to get into heaven…….a cruel scam.

sigh. some years I had to (work hard to) convince an otherwise reasonable person that they did not need to hire me to translate a huge amount of documentation for a Nigerian prince scam (in this case it was someone who was going to donate billions from a UN fund or something). They really, really wanted to pay me to do this stuff and really, really didn't want to believe it was a scam. I showed them the same emails I get (at least once a week), and gave them a link to a great TV documentary about it. They still resisted, so I eventually just gave up and said, sorry, I can't help you, and they went away angry with me. No idea if they found someone else to take their money and help them get fleeced or what.

And yet, a few months ago, my aunt lost $$$$ in an online dating scam. She was 100% convinced that a (supposed) Danish pediatric surgeon was online chatting with old Brazilian widows, and when he asked for money for some cockamamie excuse, she sent it. Lost a good amount too, before finally realizing she was in hot water and calling me to see if I thought he was really Danish. The person didn't even really try, the prefix on his phone number on the chat app was out of Nigeria (she didn't believe me on that), and there were many, many signs, but I guess hope called louder than logic.... And, like Dan says above--- everyone told her it was a scam, including her son who works in IT.... and she pooh-poohed everyone and kept on chatting with scammers online. It's a gold mine, apparently!

The story is designed to weed out potential victims that are too much work.  

Most of us can never understand how people fall for something that ridiculous.   At least from our point of view.  Thus we delete the spam and move on.

That makes their job easier,  as only 2% or so respond,  and to half of that, the story sounds perfectly in agreement with their understanding of the world.

How about a princess instead.

I suppose that is what mystifies me. What part of their brain is so different than mine?   A few years ago an area TV station covered an older couple  in my region than was scammed out of their entire savings of several hundred thousand dollars.   They gave their bank routing number and savings account number to a voice on the telephone.  

Wanna start a permaculture snail farm?

It's the same mechanism that causes me to buy a lottery ticket every so often.   Only in some people,  it's way stronger and combined with their world view and experiences.   I could understand how it could happen.

What I have trouble understanding is the kind of person it takes to run a scam.  

Hi r,

Those people are much easier for me to understand. ….”Everyone does it.   You do it too.  I am just better at it. “   I avoid specifics because we would plunge into Cider Press. But the logic is sort of like, “ I saw you step on a bug, so it is ok for me to kill a child.”   Or, “ They were planning on getting money from me, so what is wrong with me getting money from them?”

r ranson wrote:It's the same mechanism that causes me to buy a lottery ticket every so often.   Only in some people,  it's way stronger and combined with their world view and experiences.   I could understand how it could happen.

What I have trouble understanding is the kind of person it takes to run a scam.  

Really?  I feel like almost everything is a scam.  So like, all people.

The mechanism that helps people fall for tricks is the same one that exists in a gardener's brain.  The hope of reward that isn't immediate - optimism required to plant seeds.  It's a lot of work to build a garden and tend it each year.

This is the same mechanism that is over developed in a gambler's brain.

And develop it another way, and we get someone more susceptible to scams.  

And there are some out there with this mechanism so underdeveloped, that they can't even take the gamble to make new friends.

Each individual human has unique experiences that shape, sharpen, or dampen these natural tendencies.  The goal is always moderation, but not everyone can achieve it.

To put it another way, it's the mechanism is hope.  

Without hope, we can't be fooled.  But it's also a very sad life not to have any hope at all. I like to imagine most of us live in a middle ground with just the right amount but not too much.  

The great majority of people are pretty decent. I have travelled to many different countries, and been helped by purely random strangers many many times. One time some locals shamed a vendor into returning money to me after he overcharged me (a small overcharge. Nobody was angry and he agreed easily, it was almost a joke). Another time I failed to bargain sufficiently and agreed to pay the initial price offered. The seller looked ashamed and gave me back half my money. He didn't want to cheat me, he was just playing the game by the local rules and I didn't know the rules.

Scammers are the bottom feeders, the lowest 7% of the human race. They take advantage of the fact that most people are pretty decent most of the time.

Hi Dan,

I suspect there are many “Nigerian Princes”.  Once word got out, I am pretty sure copies would have appeared.

I can’t help but feel that the same people that trust the scammers are the same kind of people that trust authority figures and the government.

I sent my $750- told me I won the lottery email slot....