Don't you love cons...

namaarie

namaarie

Joined
Aug 23, 2004
Messages
1,499
I've given considerable thought to the scourge of the con artist today. Just watching TV, it was right in my face. Oprah did a thing on it today that I briefly saw. Some lady was duped by that nice Nigerian banker who wanted to give her millions. All she had to do was pay the tax, right?

I admit, my first response was not one of sympathy. More along the lines of "Did she seriously just trust a 'Nigerian Banker?' Come on, couldn't she see through that?" But then I got to thinking that a great many, including the very elderly, young naive people, people with limited knowledge of the English language, and many others might not be able to see through certain scams. I mean, after all, scams affect millions every year. Or if you included, say, overpricing at a gunshow when the salesman sees someone who doesn't look like he knows what he's doing and convinces him that the M44 Mosin Nagant over there is a vintage war piece worth $200. I've seen that kinda stuff happen. People have tried it on me. I guess I should work on looking more like I know guns, however that may be... :)

Anyhow, it seems wherever you look, there is another snake oil salesman. And nowadays, with the internet, snake oil comes in many flavors. The other day, I came upstairs to find my dad cursing at the computer. When I asked what he was doing, he said he was getting frustrated that it took so many steps asking for his information before he got the "free computer" from the box he clicked on. After all, it had said that he was the 100,000,000th viewer, so he got a big prize. Only problem was all the information they wanted and that you had to sign up for several of their programs before you got your "free prize of a computer." Yeah, free, sure... Thank God I stopped him before they got too much!

After explaining to my dad that he was not really the 100,000,000th viewer, and that there will never EVER be a "free computer" for just clicking the banner on the website, I realized that if even he, a highly respected doctor, could be duped, then nobody's safe.

I saw an add on TV today that I thought you'd all get a kick out of...

http://www.theinfinityrazor.com/Default.asp?bhcp=1 It's basically a razor that will never dull. I'm sure they make similar claims about their kitchen knife.

Jeez, if HI could figure out how to use carbon and tungsten in their steel just right, we would never have to sharpen or even realign the edges, ever again! All knives should do that, so they'll never dull either! Why didn't we think of this before? Yay!! :D :jerkit: Well, I guess I'm not quite sold. Anybody smell snake oil?

I admit it, I've been duped my fare share. Once I called after watching an ad on TV to get a car dent-remover. They overcharged me and put me on just about every telemarketing call list imaginable, without my consent. I don't know if I ever even tried to use it. See, we all do dumb stuff sometimes, and I know I felt pretty dumb!

I hate that it seems, in our mass-media society, we have to question just about everything, ever on the lookout for fraud. And sadly, if you look hard, it's there more often than you'd think.

What is it in a person that makes them want to prey on the weak? What makes them give hope to someone who desperately needs it, only to smash that hope, and so many other dreams, to pieces? What makes them able to look at themselves in the mirror, knowing damn well that they just stole some ailing WWII veteran's life savings? I guess this offense seems somewhat slimier than most, since it attacks a person's sense of judgment, and in that, attacks a person's dignity. I wonder if that "Nigerian Banker" would have the guts to pull the con in person, rather than by email? I bet not.

What experiences have you all had with cons? I'm sure you'll remember it if you have. And how, psychologically, can people bring themselves to be so cruel and deceitful?

I never cease to be amazed by the wide array of things that humans can do. From compassion to cons, we're a weird breed.

Thoughts?

Chris
 
namaarie said:
I wonder if that "Nigerian Banker" would have the guts to pull the con in person, rather than by email? I bet not.
Click to expand...

A decade ago I used to be a reg at a political chatroom. One of the members there was a woman who immigrated here from Nigeria. She said the Nigerian gangsters are brutal and vicious, which gangsters tend to be regardless where they might be found.

Pulling a true con though doesn't involve machetes and machine guns. It's all about guile and cunning and the ability to manipulate. 20 pesos says the same folks over there are running cons on their fellow Nigerians too.
 
I'm with you, Chris. I get so tired of seeing the snake oil seep out around things. People are in such a hurry to get to the top, they will use any means necessary to get there by hook or by crook. Those pop up adds and infomercials are utter traps. I fight it every day in the swimming pool industry. I work in an industry where A) you don't really have to KNOW what you're doing to hook people into giving you 1000's of dollars, and B) is a luxury item that most people don't know anything about so you can tell them whatever you want at whatever price you think you can get out of them. Of course, by doing this you surely won't last long. You'll be out of business in a season. I see it every year. Someone will open up a shop, dupe about 6 or 7 people into giving them a deposit (or maybe even all the money up front:eek:), take 3 months to get half way through the build before they skip town. Wait 5 or 6 years, come back and do it again. EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. It makes my blood boil. However, I can't feel too sorry for the people that are tricked. A maximum search of 10 minutes will tell you who in this area you want to by from. Buyer Beware, and you get what you pay for.
 
Right here in my town, there was a guy who scammed millions by selling shares in a phony corporation. He lived in flamboyant luxury until he got caught; his downfall was a textbook example of the con man's besetting weakness. They get addicted to the pleasure of making a score; they start scamming for kicks more than for the money, long after they should have taken their scoop and run. I suppose those Nigerians (and Ghana is catching up quickly) are mostly just employees rather than actual 'entrepreneurs'.
 
I read not too long ago about a college Finance professer who was taking people's retirement money and "investing" it the best way he knew how. He guaranteed the people he duped that they would get something like 8-20% return.
He stole Millions before somebody realized that they couldent get their money back.
When the police raided his house, not a nice house BTW, they found Millions of dollars in Artwork, Silver made from famous workers of the Revolutionary War, a couple of corvettes in the gerage, and all sorts of stuff.
Since all the guy did was spend it on stuff and vacations the FBI has said that the majority of money "is gone".
Many people have lost their retirement because of this guy.
It reminds me if Enron.
 
In fairness to Enron, the company did in fact hire a consultant to advise its employees re investing their new money; the consultant warned them not to put it all in one basket. It was the employees who didn't listen who got burned and started screaming, and the media have focused exclusively on them. Whenever the media go to demonizing somebody, it's well to do one's own research; 10 to 1 it'll turn out to be a politically motivated smear. Admittedly, I'm too lazy to do this very often myself, and anyway, most of the stuff in the papers & TV is just partisan boilerplate; just glance at the headline and you've read the article.
 
Employee's didn't listen to a corporate stooge who suggested they not invest all in their company but in other places? That does not exempt Enron.
People who invested all in Microsoft are not sad today. Enron was reporting earnings and growth not substantiated- so investors were putting money on false data, on lies.

Men are greedy and buyer beware. That is our world.
One reason Himalayan Imports is special- win or fall, Bill Martino wanted to do this right.

munk
 
I have seen the commercials and at the end if you "call now" they give you one free. If it never dulls why do they give you 2 of them? You could give a razor with diamond blades and I would dull it eventually. That and those stupid commercials for the "samurai sharp" carbide sharpeners. What a piece of crap.
 
No matter what happens to you in life, it is a certainty there will be TV and that you can get 'one free'.



Kind of a crack up. We'll bring McDonald's and 'one free' to the Stars someday....our contribution to eternity. That, and Andy Griffith re-runs.



munk
 
I was approached with the Nigerian Scam when I listed a vintage dirt-bike for sale on the Net. The guy was relentless, and only stopped hassling me when I forwarded his
ISP info to an FBI Agent I used to know.

Unfortunately, some people just can't seem to latch onto the notion of something being too good to be true. They are either niave or passively willing victims to a certain extent.
Greed on both ends of the transaction in some cases as well, I suppose.

DaddyDett
 
Hi folks,
Yesterday I received no less than 4 potentially scam emails. They all promised millions of dollars if only I would give my name, date of birth, my home address and of course my bank account details (yeah right!). 4 in day might seem a bit OTT but is about average around here. Needless to say, all these scams originated from countries inside Africa. It seems to me that the only way that this will be stopped would be to subject the entire continent to a powerful electromagnetic pulse.....ah well, good thing dreams are free, eh?!
regards
Nig
 
Wolf_1989 said:
20 pesos says the same folks over there are running cons on their fellow Nigerians too.
Click to expand...

I see your 20 pesos and raise you 10 that your average Nigerian has less disposable income to be thrown at scams than your average American, and when money is scarcer it probably takes more force than befuddlement to wrench it away.

Still, fools and money, etcetera.
 
the nigerians are generally not trying to defraud you, they are trying to create false identities to use to do fraud.

they are in this country now; they've pretty much taken over the drug dealing industry, and some other things.
 
I can't remember if I laughed or yelled at the TV the first time I saw that Infinity Razor commercial. The really sad thing is, you know there are people believing that crap and buying it, or they wouldn't keep spending money on the TV advertising.

Why are people so gullible? Like Agent Mulder, we want to believe. Why do I keep buying new knives made from the latest "wonder-steel"? I want to believe that it is THE STEEL, the one that will finally do it all, be totally stain proof, tough and hold an edge forever, and be able to do every job with perfect efficiency. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm NOT equating quality cutlery makers with con men. This is just a comment on me wanting to believe something that isn't.

There is a saying that you can't con an honest person. I don't know if that is 100% true or not, but I think an honest person is more con resistant. Greed seems to be the main weakness that con artists appeal to, except sometimes it is vanity, too. The weight-loss, cosmetic, baldness and e.d. cures industries come to mind as appealing to vanity.

As to the con artists, I think they see the world as a "dog-eat-dog" world, were there are prey and there are predators, as in the animal kingdom. They are the predators who live off of the prey (so called "marks"). They have no more empathy for their victims or remorse for their crimes than a tiger has for its kill. How does a person like that come about? I'm not sure, I'm neither a psychologist or a sociologist. I think though, some of it is by nature and some by nurture...in other words, some of it is a genetic predisposition to being that way, and also being influenced by their environment. Until our society does background investigations and DNA testing on wanna-be parents and issues parenting permits only to people with parenting qualities, these people will continue to exist (in my opinion, of course). And although I'm not advocating restricting who can have children, sometimes I think perhaps we should--it happens whenever I see cases of child abuse and neglect.

So, what is the answer to the con artist problem? Being aware. Educate ourselves on their mode of operation. I think at this point, that's all we can do (and buy copius amounts of quality knives of course!) :D
 
I wasn't suggesting that the bad guys at Enron should be let off the hook. Please keep in mind that a corporation is a legal fiction; call it "Enron" or "Uncle Elwood" or what you please, it's still an imaginary entity. If I say, "Enron, thou art evil"... where is my finger pointing? A corporation, a government, a society are all collections of individual human beings. People constantly forget this, and they are too ready to assume that all the beast's tentacles are intelligently coordinated. My bet is that the consultant and/or the Enronner who hired him didn't know the worst and did their jobs in naive earnest.
 
Wato- We don't know each other but will. I'm not a sloganeer who hates the 'evil corporations'.
But the Enron story is documented. The higher-ups knew the sleight of hand. That's why some went to jail. If you had to pick an emblem of corruption in the corporate world, Enron is one of the few targets in today's hyperbole society that actually wears it well. They screwed us.

It's always a big joke, and a little sadness, when I hear 'tax the corporations'.
Today the 'corporations' are used like the Great Satan is used in the Middle East. If only we could get our money back from those evil bastids, and the Rich. It's all their fault. Waa Waah.

Tax a corporation and raise the prices of goods. That's what it does, along with supporting the Federal Government to spend more money instead of our spending money.


munk
 
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