Why you keep getting e-mail about West African treasures
By adamg - Tue, 10/27/2009 - 12:44pm.
Because they work. Wicked Local Newton reports a Newton resident actually wired money to Ghana to help somebody there obtain "two trunks full of gold." Police did not report the amount the resident lost.
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unreal
On the first day of class, the first thing out of my professor's mouth was "The average person is an [expletive] moron. Now think of all the people you know who are below average."
When you think people couldn't be any dumber, someone always goes the distance.
On the first day of class,
So then you looked around the class and scored yourself as....?
ummmmm
I wonder what's more astounding - that they fell for the scam and wired money, or that they actually called local police and expected something to happen. Then again, I remember giving my mother the 'email lecture' about not trusting anything...
Id give her the number for the Ghana Police
and then just sit back and see what happens....
Many times these scams
Many times these scams request people keep it private for one reason or another, most of the time they even admit there is some legal element to it and that the person they are emailing will be breaking some laws. I often have a hard time feeling bad for these people because there is a sense that they are doing something wrong and they justify it to themselves.
People today
Well, a lot of this person's innocence has nothing to do with the computer. I remember a government hearing on something silly - where a daughter said her elderly father was getting 70 copies of Time magazine each week, because he thought if he bought more magazines he would stand a better chance of winning publishing clearing house sweepstakes. So you don't need a computer to do bonehead moves - it just lets you do them faster :-)
obligatory
obligatory
Thank you Mr. Anon
Everybody at work has seen this already apparently but it's news to me. Unbelievable.
I know Newton isn't uniformly wealthy...
But part of me does wonder how someone so dumb (or at least, so oblivious) can afford to live there. How's it possible to have missed every single anti-phishing story of the last five years?
No age listed
... but it could have been an older person who is losing their ability to think clearly. My MIL had to constantly run interference because her elderly aunt had alzheimers and that made her a huge target. She kept getting sold useless junk over the phone, making pledges to nonexistant charities, etc.
yip
My grandmother grew up in the 'polite' era and would never hang up on a telemarketer... sigh.
Mind hacks
They can also prey on seniors' tendency to worry about losing their cognitive abilities. It's an old magician's trick - plant the seeds of a memory, then sow confusion. Call Sadie, tell her she's entitled to some small payment, maybe interest on a long-closed bank account. You'll be sending her a check soon.
Call her again next week. "We talked last week; you owe us a check. Have you sent it yet?" She remembers you, she remembers talking about a check. She thought she was getting a check, but she's getting old, and maybe she misheard, or misremembered; it's all so confusing.
Preying on the elderly
Can we add bilking money from persons 65 or older to the list of executable crimes?