Appealing Ideas #2
This Idea is appealing for totally different reasons than #1, and it has to do with an an altogether darker and dingier side of human nature. This Idea can be found lurking in many an Inbox or Junk-Mail folder, especially if you're like me and visit a lot of dodgy sites (all in the name of research, of course) - I've got Al Jazeera and the Ku Klux Klan on the same browser, I keep expecting my hard-drive to declare civil war. I get a lot of Junk, and because my main address is set to Contacts Only I have to trudge through it from time to time in case I've missed something personal. This morning, there were 118 (I'm lazy) and I came across yet another example of the Idea.
I think I've probably had three different versions of this, but the basic premise is always this: a person I've never heard of has been "searching the Net" for a discreet European and has settled on me for the obvious reasons - good vibes, nice aura, God told him/her to - to help them with a terrible financial catastrophe/opportunity which only a European bank account can avert/take advantage of. The amounts are usually in the mid $20 million U.S. For instance, my first was the widow of a recently disgraced (to death) Foreign Minister in an African country whose name I can't mention - because she didn't. Anyway, this honest and honourably-deceased Patriot just happened to have salted away as a large amount of readies in a Swiss Bank-Account (as you do) and his grieving widow, unjustly suspected by her husband's muderers of knowing where it is, can't get her hands on it personally. All I have to do is send my account details to (obviously-made-up Yahoo-address) and she'll cut me in for 10%.
Today's example was much the same in basic principles, but this time there was a verifiable plane-crash involved. Just in case I was cynical enough to doubt the existence of the horrifying disaster in which the Honest Patriot, his children, parents, grandchildren, spinster aunts and livestock perished, there was a handy link to a CNN News report. The Patriot was a Lebanese importer-exporter of Textiles and Automobiles (sic) in Benin, and his only surviving friend and lawyer, Humphrey Menssa (honest, I kid you not), International Barrister, needs a next-of-kin (with a bank account, obviously) to receive the US $27.4 million the Patriot handily deposited in a (you've guessed it) Swiss Bank Account. This is a good example of Ideas leading to other ideas; I'm now going to have to satisfy my curiosity about how likely it is that a Textile and Automobile entepreneur (?) in Benin could legitimately earn $27.4 million, which will mean finding out where Benin actually is. I'm digressing again, aren't I?
There's one distinguishing characteristic in all the e-mails I've received so far, as well as the Idea itself, and that's that they're all written in absolutely laughable English. I've seen DVD instruction manuals better than this. What I haven't decided yet is if that's a deliberate part of the scam - "you can trust me, I'm just a poor ignorant (fill in blank)" - designed to lull me into a false sense of superiority, or if they're genuinely as crap and disorganised as all that. If I wanted to pull off a scam in say, Estonian, I'd find myself someone with no scruples who could actually speak and write it properly for me - it surely can't be that hard to find unscrupulous people who can speak English, I know plenty myself. Or do they think that if I'm stupid enough to fall for such a lame scam then I won't notice the spelling?
Actually, they'd have a point there, and this is a bit of a flaw in the Idea for me; fair enough, I suppose, there probably is one born every minute but they tend not to have computers (or not for very long). If I was enough of a nutter to send my bank account details to bigfatcon.com I'd probably keep my savings in a biscuit barrel in the shed in any case. And a wicked little part of my mind, the little lawless chaotic part of me that lurks in the reptile-part of my brain, thinks "But I could do this so much better! You're targeting the wrong people! This is feeble!"
Because this Idea is a heat-seeking-missile set to greedy and stupid people, who really do believe you can get a free lunch; most of those people live on the peripherary of the rich and powerful, eating free lunches. People who are already rich or have power, political or otherwise, are generally a bit more intelligent (or cunning, or ruthless) than the hangers-on, that's why they're rich and powerful. This Idea should be touted around politicos, celebs and minor royalty, that's where you find the real bottom-feeders. If Humphrey Menssa put on a nice suit, hired someone with a title, and invited the right parasite for lunch at the Ritz, then the idea might be a goer.
The scam usually finishes with some reason why the money has to be claimed within a short period of time; in the case of my fictional Lebanese relation it was 14 days, or the money would revert to the State of Benin. As I said, I'll have to do a bit of research on Benin before I can swear to it, but I bet they're pretty poor. Or if not, then the people who live there are. I expect $27.4 million would come in very handy indeed; so, not only do you have to be greedy and stupid, you have to be pretty ruthless too. I can't bring myself to be sorry for anyone who's been taken in by this one, which is partly why I wanted to investigate the Idea further; this is not hassling fragile pensioners to change their gas company, or stealing charity boxes from shops to feed a habit. This is a sheer naked appeal to avarice and lack of scruples; Humphrey Menssa (Barrister and International Legal Practitioner) doesn't exactly say it's illegal in so many words, but he does ask me to "Please do not circumvent this information, handle it discretely " (sic again). So tough luck, suckers.
I can't bring myself to believe this is a serious attempt at international money-laundering, it's just too stupid and random. It certainly does speak volumes about our opinion of each other as a species, though. You get so much more access to cons and scams like this on the Net, and so many of them seem to rely on precisely the same Idea as this one; that enough people are going to be stupid and greedy enough that, no matter how poor they may be individually, it's at least worth trying in the aggregate. Any fool can set up an e-mail address and buy himself a list of addresses, as proved by the fact that so many do; write a sad letter (or rather, in this case, pay someone else to do it) and press Send. However, if I discount all forms of advertsising, which are legalised scams with better graphics, I'm definitely getting more obvious scams based on greed than on compassion at the moment.
Fake charity appeals had a brief moment of glory and, because I do contribute to a charity and unwisely got my name on everyone's mailing list, I did get one of those. It must have been clocked pretty quickly, though, because I knew about it beforehand; a lot more effort was put into it than into Humphrey Menssa's, even with the informative plane-crash link, and it did fool some people I believe. But scammers who do that kind of thing get very unpopular very quickly, and they don't tend to last long. Not to mention having dog-crap through the letter-box every day for the rest of their lives if caught. If I'd been ripped off while donating £50 to a dodgy disaster relief fund, I'd make a big fuss and complain to absolutely anyone who'd listen; if I got cleaned out plotting to defraud the State of Benin, I think I'd be inclined to slink off with my tail between my legs and never tell a soul.
So maybe the Idea is cleverer than at first take; it might snare less people overall, but it'll probably last a lot longer and if I've received three different ones then it's clearly evolving. The link to a real-world event is a new touch, and surely they'll get the language sorted eventually unless it is a deliberate ploy; American/English will probably hobble on as the Net lingua franca for a bit longer. And this Idea, this stupid and transparent scam, is about as close as it gets to a victimless crime as far as I'm concerned. Costs won't be passed on to taxpayers or the shareholders of insurance companies, no-one gets hurt anywhere but the pocket, and the scammers make no pretence of legitimacy. In fact, they offer an outright bribe for doing something that must be illegal; I really can't believe anyone who knows how to turn on a computer and navigate to their inbox could possibly believe it's legal to pretend you're the next-of-kin of a complete stranger and skim $200,000 dollars from a foreign government. Surely not. So the only people to suffer will be stupid unscrupulous people who don't see anything wrong with defrauding third-world countries (ahem! Mark Thatcher), and even they won't dare to complain.
I wonder if I followed the link and offfered my services, they'd cut me in on this Idea? I could write a seriously tempting letter with the right motivation, and I've got a suit.........
I think I've probably had three different versions of this, but the basic premise is always this: a person I've never heard of has been "searching the Net" for a discreet European and has settled on me for the obvious reasons - good vibes, nice aura, God told him/her to - to help them with a terrible financial catastrophe/opportunity which only a European bank account can avert/take advantage of. The amounts are usually in the mid $20 million U.S. For instance, my first was the widow of a recently disgraced (to death) Foreign Minister in an African country whose name I can't mention - because she didn't. Anyway, this honest and honourably-deceased Patriot just happened to have salted away as a large amount of readies in a Swiss Bank-Account (as you do) and his grieving widow, unjustly suspected by her husband's muderers of knowing where it is, can't get her hands on it personally. All I have to do is send my account details to (obviously-made-up Yahoo-address) and she'll cut me in for 10%.
Today's example was much the same in basic principles, but this time there was a verifiable plane-crash involved. Just in case I was cynical enough to doubt the existence of the horrifying disaster in which the Honest Patriot, his children, parents, grandchildren, spinster aunts and livestock perished, there was a handy link to a CNN News report. The Patriot was a Lebanese importer-exporter of Textiles and Automobiles (sic) in Benin, and his only surviving friend and lawyer, Humphrey Menssa (honest, I kid you not), International Barrister, needs a next-of-kin (with a bank account, obviously) to receive the US $27.4 million the Patriot handily deposited in a (you've guessed it) Swiss Bank Account. This is a good example of Ideas leading to other ideas; I'm now going to have to satisfy my curiosity about how likely it is that a Textile and Automobile entepreneur (?) in Benin could legitimately earn $27.4 million, which will mean finding out where Benin actually is. I'm digressing again, aren't I?
There's one distinguishing characteristic in all the e-mails I've received so far, as well as the Idea itself, and that's that they're all written in absolutely laughable English. I've seen DVD instruction manuals better than this. What I haven't decided yet is if that's a deliberate part of the scam - "you can trust me, I'm just a poor ignorant (fill in blank)" - designed to lull me into a false sense of superiority, or if they're genuinely as crap and disorganised as all that. If I wanted to pull off a scam in say, Estonian, I'd find myself someone with no scruples who could actually speak and write it properly for me - it surely can't be that hard to find unscrupulous people who can speak English, I know plenty myself. Or do they think that if I'm stupid enough to fall for such a lame scam then I won't notice the spelling?
Actually, they'd have a point there, and this is a bit of a flaw in the Idea for me; fair enough, I suppose, there probably is one born every minute but they tend not to have computers (or not for very long). If I was enough of a nutter to send my bank account details to bigfatcon.com I'd probably keep my savings in a biscuit barrel in the shed in any case. And a wicked little part of my mind, the little lawless chaotic part of me that lurks in the reptile-part of my brain, thinks "But I could do this so much better! You're targeting the wrong people! This is feeble!"
Because this Idea is a heat-seeking-missile set to greedy and stupid people, who really do believe you can get a free lunch; most of those people live on the peripherary of the rich and powerful, eating free lunches. People who are already rich or have power, political or otherwise, are generally a bit more intelligent (or cunning, or ruthless) than the hangers-on, that's why they're rich and powerful. This Idea should be touted around politicos, celebs and minor royalty, that's where you find the real bottom-feeders. If Humphrey Menssa put on a nice suit, hired someone with a title, and invited the right parasite for lunch at the Ritz, then the idea might be a goer.
The scam usually finishes with some reason why the money has to be claimed within a short period of time; in the case of my fictional Lebanese relation it was 14 days, or the money would revert to the State of Benin. As I said, I'll have to do a bit of research on Benin before I can swear to it, but I bet they're pretty poor. Or if not, then the people who live there are. I expect $27.4 million would come in very handy indeed; so, not only do you have to be greedy and stupid, you have to be pretty ruthless too. I can't bring myself to be sorry for anyone who's been taken in by this one, which is partly why I wanted to investigate the Idea further; this is not hassling fragile pensioners to change their gas company, or stealing charity boxes from shops to feed a habit. This is a sheer naked appeal to avarice and lack of scruples; Humphrey Menssa (Barrister and International Legal Practitioner) doesn't exactly say it's illegal in so many words, but he does ask me to "Please do not circumvent this information, handle it discretely " (sic again). So tough luck, suckers.
I can't bring myself to believe this is a serious attempt at international money-laundering, it's just too stupid and random. It certainly does speak volumes about our opinion of each other as a species, though. You get so much more access to cons and scams like this on the Net, and so many of them seem to rely on precisely the same Idea as this one; that enough people are going to be stupid and greedy enough that, no matter how poor they may be individually, it's at least worth trying in the aggregate. Any fool can set up an e-mail address and buy himself a list of addresses, as proved by the fact that so many do; write a sad letter (or rather, in this case, pay someone else to do it) and press Send. However, if I discount all forms of advertsising, which are legalised scams with better graphics, I'm definitely getting more obvious scams based on greed than on compassion at the moment.
Fake charity appeals had a brief moment of glory and, because I do contribute to a charity and unwisely got my name on everyone's mailing list, I did get one of those. It must have been clocked pretty quickly, though, because I knew about it beforehand; a lot more effort was put into it than into Humphrey Menssa's, even with the informative plane-crash link, and it did fool some people I believe. But scammers who do that kind of thing get very unpopular very quickly, and they don't tend to last long. Not to mention having dog-crap through the letter-box every day for the rest of their lives if caught. If I'd been ripped off while donating £50 to a dodgy disaster relief fund, I'd make a big fuss and complain to absolutely anyone who'd listen; if I got cleaned out plotting to defraud the State of Benin, I think I'd be inclined to slink off with my tail between my legs and never tell a soul.
So maybe the Idea is cleverer than at first take; it might snare less people overall, but it'll probably last a lot longer and if I've received three different ones then it's clearly evolving. The link to a real-world event is a new touch, and surely they'll get the language sorted eventually unless it is a deliberate ploy; American/English will probably hobble on as the Net lingua franca for a bit longer. And this Idea, this stupid and transparent scam, is about as close as it gets to a victimless crime as far as I'm concerned. Costs won't be passed on to taxpayers or the shareholders of insurance companies, no-one gets hurt anywhere but the pocket, and the scammers make no pretence of legitimacy. In fact, they offer an outright bribe for doing something that must be illegal; I really can't believe anyone who knows how to turn on a computer and navigate to their inbox could possibly believe it's legal to pretend you're the next-of-kin of a complete stranger and skim $200,000 dollars from a foreign government. Surely not. So the only people to suffer will be stupid unscrupulous people who don't see anything wrong with defrauding third-world countries (ahem! Mark Thatcher), and even they won't dare to complain.
I wonder if I followed the link and offfered my services, they'd cut me in on this Idea? I could write a seriously tempting letter with the right motivation, and I've got a suit.........
posted by holojojo at 3:06 PM
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