They dont have easy access to computers in Canada?

Word to the wise...money in a suit case is code for "not legit". ;-)

@trujunglist: There's a difference between real charity and greed in the guise of charity.

The perfect example is the story of a soldier trying to get home to see his wife/sick parents/kid/etc. He needs money to get home, but all he has to trade is a diamond ring.

He has no money, but will sell this ring that he swears is worth $1000 for $500 (or $200, $100, etc). The point being, you can make a profit if you help him out. You KNOW you would be ripping him off, but you feel better because you're helping him somehow.

Of course, when you get the ring appraised, it turns out it's worthless.

An honest person who genuinely wants to help, buys him a bus ticket home. A dishonest person gets scammed.

@theczardictates:

Actually, you just proved my point. If someone comes in and says they "found" money/chips/whatever, my natural inclination is to turn it in to the place that would be the most likely place the person who had lost it would look for it (the casino, the store, the police department, etc).

In your example, your so-called "honest" mark is attempting to keep money that is not yours...somehow, you went from "being honest, you naturally say no" to agreeing to split the money when a 3rd person shows up.

That's dishonest, and in this case, I would have not been scammed, and you would have. Now THAT is fascinating.

Like father, like son.

In this case, his relatives and family who lent him money in the first place are also as ignorant and greedy. Ya, give the kid 10 grand and make a deal that he pays me back 200 grand when he gets his "inheritance".

Honestly, I can also see why he didn't have any friends left. If any of them were good friends and educated, they'd tell him it was a scam. They wouldn't have left him. Hell, if my friend fell for something like this I wouldn't abandon them. Sure I'd scold them for being an idiot for maybe a month or three, but I wouldn't quit them just to "save embarrassment" for knowing them.

If anything, this kid probably thought his friends were all preventing him from getting his money and ignored all of them. In that case, if I had a friend like that who just wouldn't trust me compared to some strangers, I'd say "I ****ing told you, asshole".

This guy is definitely gullible and a world-class idiot -- no argument there. But not necessarily greedy.

His eyes do look a bit...red and droopy.

May I suggest he was on drugs at the time? or possibly his whole life?

SelmaDighton: Research Reagonomics.

If nobody ever fell for scams, or bought fake viagra, etc, the rest of us wouldn't have all that spam in our in-boxes.

@GoVegan:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again.

@AgentTuttle:
Hahahaha so true. This guy and his family are your definition of backwoods hillbilly dumbass stupidity and i think he deserves everything that happens to him for being such an idiot.

I wonder whatever happened.

A couple things are remarkable to me:

1. The kid actually was able to come up with $150,000. I couldn't have come up with $15,000 to make this happen without begging, borrowing, and stealing to make it happen when I was 22. It is clear he did a fair amount of borrowing, which brings me to the more incredible point:

2. No one he asked for money to make this happen was knowledgeable of this sort of scam and inquisitive enough about why he was borrowing the money to set it straight?

One dumb kid - sure. One dumb kid with 2 dumb parents and at least one dumb uncle? And no one was talking to anyone else about this exciting thing that was happening?

I just can't believe that anything like this could happen in such isolation that nobody would have said, "Um...that sounds like a scam."

I'm guessing our new liberal government will find a way for hard working, SMART Americans to PAY for this asshole's mistake.

Disgusting (yeah yeah, all you libs will call ME disgusting, I could give less than a crap, let me tell ya)
"

The incredibly hilarious thing here is your willful ignorance to the countless trillions of dollars we've paid and will be paying directly out to the banks that walked off with our money.

If you're anti-socialist, stop voting for socialist republicans.

Until then, a Democrat with health care AND LEGITIMATE OVERSIGHT will be a thousand times the capitalist than fully corporate-serving socialists like Bush, McCain, etc.

There is no such thing as laissez-faire capitalism under the GOP.

Yeah, okay, let me just GIVE little johnny 150,000$ on a lark.

So of course they were legit.

So why are scammers always from Nigeria? Why not Zimbabwe. Kenya. Morocco.

I wonder what you people are thinking sometimes. You can't cheat someone out of money because they honestly want to help? It happens every single day on the street corner! Many of the people you see on the corner with a sign begging for change are scamming you under the guise of helping them out.. like the mom with 4 kids (where are they? oh, with the dad, right) or the dude at the gas station that broke down aways and needs a couple bucks for gas.
Honesty scams happen all the time.

@andrewe: The solution to this is to get a court order of conservancy over your grandmother's assets. That would prevent her from doing this.

@TechnoDestructo: Which proves that his friends and family are stupid too. If I loan people money, I want to know what it's being used for and how it's spent. Just like the bank bailout. :)

@AstroPig7: Maybe Gullibility is an inherited trait?

A chick that I work with nearly fell for a nigerian scam. She was in the market for some purebread dog that was going to cost like $1,000 a piece. So, she puts this message up on a breeder forum looking for a specific type of dog, and is contacted by a "reverend" from Nigeria who works for a dog rescue there. According to the emails she got, he had the perfect dog for her, and she would need to send him the money, plus money to ship the dog over in the cargo section of a plane. She even called and spoke with this man, trying to make sure it was legitamit. At the very end, though, she started to get suspicious, when the emails from the "reverend" would start going from 1st person, to 3rd person and back, and how he wouldn't answer his phone. Thankfully she didn't send them any money, but I guess it isn't just the greedy that are targeted, but people who are trying to conduct completely legitamit transactions, but just end up getting suckered into something by an offer that's too good to pass up.

How did he fall for this and how did he get $150,000 lent to him by his family? He apparently boasts a proud lineage of gullibility and greed. The apple has not fallen far from the tree here.

one born every minute, thats sixty an hour,three thousand something a day, and you still get suprised by them !! he's american right !!

@Roclawzi: What a MUGU!

@homerjay wants Boston Legal back!: Running the projector was also good way to stay warm from the light exhaust for a least 20-30 minutes in those schools with inefficent single pane windows and ancient heating systems...

@andrewe: You know, it is a good job for Nigerians (etc) if you are in a dump of a country where just with a little internet cafe access on a POS refurbed Pentium II computer, a little time and creative wording, you can become a rich mo-fo.

Gawd those folks must think the entire North American continent is made of gold owned by idiots...

@banmojo: Although harsh, I agree with you. I believe this guy lives in Canada so our government won't have to do anything and I would hope to hell they wouldn't regardless. But had this been an American, I'm sure someone would have been sympathetic and bailed this moron out. I love how humans arethe only animals arrogant enough to think Darwinism doesn't apply to them. It's survival of the fittest in the entire animal kingdom except for us. We give lazy people money who don't deserve it, we wait in lines at gas stations behind idiots trying to get rich from the lottery. Too many people in our country want something for nothing and are getting it which further propels laziness with their offspring. People! Work Hard and Be Happy!

And extremely gullible. I mean, $12.8 million ffs!

@eiflerb: Nevermind, he's Canadian not American.

I wonder who he's going to sue?

I never thought the actor from "Salute Your Shorts" would fall for this.

what was that about a fool and and their money? hmm i forget.

I'm sorry but there should be no mercy for this guy. (unless he's actually developmentally disabled, I'm afraid the picture could go either way)

It's too bad he dragged down his friends and relatives.

Quite frankly, I'm only sorry I didn't meet this complete and total idiot before the Nigerians did. I'm sure I could have LEGALLY taken all his money from him.

THIS is a good reason why I don't support socialism. Some people will never be smart enough to deserve to own land, bank accounts, mortgages, material things. They need to be cared after by society, which means in MY books that they need to be peasants and work for their land owner.

I'm guessing our new liberal government will find a way for hard working, SMART Americans to PAY for this asshole's mistake.

Disgusting (yeah yeah, all you libs will call ME disgusting, I could give less than a crap, let me tell ya)

@Jordan Martin: I do the same with telemarketers. I keep 'em on the line as long as possible without ever giving any information. Eventually I start getting board or I see something good on television though, so I'll hang up on them mid-sentence.

IT'S FUN!

I wouldn't mind trying to waste some big-time scammers time.

@jaydez: During the period that the kid was giving them money, the Canadian dollar was fairly close to the American dollar. Thank Bush for that one.

@Hoss: That's a damn good point.

Thinking you can get a huge inheritance from a total stranger ("The lawyer said his client had no family but wanted to leave the money to a Rempel. It was his lucky day.") is not honest. You realize you don't deserve some other family's inheritance, but you want it anyway.

No, I think that saying has quite a lot of truth.

If this guy had a soundtrack, this would be the playlist:

1. Something Stupid- Nancy Sinatra

2. Tears of a Clown- Smoky Robinson"

3. Money, Money, Money- ABBA

4. Who' Crying Now?- Journey

5. Don't know what you got til it's gone- Cindrella

6. Where is my mind?- The Pixies

7. Hey Stupid- Alice Cooper

8. Everybody plays the fool- Main Ingredient

9. Money for nothing- Dire Straits

10. Wise up- Aimee Mann

I'm always dumbfounded by stories like this but I was equally dumbfounded when I found myself in one.

I'm an auditor and while I was doing an audit there was a lady in the office that was talking to her co-workers about an issue that had come up with her sister. I wasn't evesdropping but I heard bits and pieces so when she came back to where we were I asked her what she was talking about.

Turns out her sister had listed an old desk on craigslist and had gotten an e-mail telling her that if she removed the listing the guy would pay her $250 for it right away. When the check came it was $2250. Now with "all due speed" she was supposed to wire the extra money to this account to set up the delivery of the desk.

I'm sure ever one here knows where this is going. No one there did. They had all told her it sounded weird but their problem had something to do with the way the account they were supposed to wire the money to was listed. I told her its a fairly well known scam and her sister should just drop all communication with the guy since its a counterfeit check in the first place. I pulled up ftc articles, consumerist articles, any thing that came up on goolge to show her.

The kicker was that I happened to still be there when she called her sister back about it. She didn't mention anything about the ftc articles or the brunt of our conversation. All she mentioned was that the other people in the office didn't think that the account number would work to wire the money.

(Mind you read everything available about baiting safely, and follow it to the letter. These guys are still criminals.)

First of all the hustlers would demonstrate their special machine at a fairground or car boot sale that would clean bank notes that had been destroyed by the H.M.T. (Her Majesty's Treasury), they were supposedly covered in black ink that was impossible to remove. Luckily enough a friend managed to get his hands on some of these notes before they were incinerated. The hustlers showed off their special machine to the gathering crowd. It looked like one of those old card readers, the kind they put your card into and then roll over it. This magical device worked with the help of a special soloution that disolved the ink on the bank notes.

You put an inked note in, the machine removes the ink and get a clean one out the other side. In fact all the device did was switch a piece of paper covered in ink with a genuine bank note that the hustler then let the mark examine. That's why the scam works, when the sucker... I mean victim sees the magic solution produce real legal tender. The hustlers often sell fake £10 notes for £5, the average person being unable to tell the difference between real and good quality counterfeit tender.

The hustlers can then take the scam to the next level if they get a person to take the bait. In the episode of "The real hustle" that featured this scam they met a couple in a hotel room who were interested in buying a large quantity of the inked notes. After agreeing a price for the notes the hustlers showed the couple how the could wash the notes in the hotel rooms bath. They used three real £20 pound notes but hey they may have just given away £60 quid but the couple just paid them a few thousand. The couple are elated, they dump all the inked notes they've just purchased in the bath along with the magic solution, the water instantly turns black as the ink dissolves. They begin the long wait for the solution to do it's work. The hustler being a nice guy invites the couple for a celebratory lunch to alleviate the boredom. Unfortunately the lunch is cut short when the hustler had to leave after getting a phone call from his business partner. The couple finish their lunch and make there way back to the hotel. They drain the bath of the black inky water only to find worthless strips of ink stained paper.

Oh by the way, the metaphorical cherry on the the top of this story is one of the hustlers used the alias Rob Marks.

I admit to being extremely gullible BECAUSE of the fact that I try to be honest. It has little to do with money; I just take everyone at their word. I can't fathom people lying to your face.

Other posters are correct in that greed wouldn't get me, but a seemingly honest request I would likely fall for.

If you were dumb enough to entertain a Nigerian scam, the next step in rationality would be of course to question why you had to pay money to get money. And the answer is, of course, that the money isn't legal tender yet. Wow.

Wait, Wait, WAIT A MINUTE!!! So you're telling me that that email I got from Xi Lifong in Shanghai telling me that I won $3.7 million dollars in a random global lottery and the way to claim it is to send them $4500 so they can certify-mail me my check is a scam?!

WTF?!

I felt the EXACT same way when I found out Santa wasn't real....I know how ya feel man...

You just can't usually con them. The difference between making 5 grand on a home improvement fraud and making 60 grand on a Nigerian 419 is the honesty of the mark.

@Paul B:

Wrong.

2. Seldom a Police Offier as there are dozens of guys who love to role play on the 'net. Most of them are old, fat, ugly and broke. But hey, everybody has to have a hobby and besides it is a lot of fun.

@Dsmith171: Team con-man, all the way.

Someone, please, sterilize the family!

OMG your avatar is the Burger Chef!

FUN MEAL!

That's awesome. I miss those.

From 419eater.com

2. But only people who are greedy and a bit dishonest themselves would get sucked in. After all most of the letters require you to pass yourself off as a relative on legal documents so they deserve what they get.

Many of the early letters did state either that person x (usually a foreign national) had died without relatives and the corrupt government would confiscate this money if person Y (the victim) doesn't impersonate a relative to claim the money. Another variation was that the money had been obtained by over-invoicing oil contracts and they needed help to sneak it out of the country. But usually these letters had a disclaimer to the effect of, "This is a completely legitimate transaction. It will be carried out legally, and you will be protected from any breach of the law." This was to reassure more honest victims that everything was above board and legal.

Now letters come in hundreds of different formats - just check out the Surplus Letters Forum! There are the well-known next-of-kin letters, the orphan scams, repentant dying sinner needs help giving fortune away to charity, tsunami victim donation appeals, fake cheque scams, wash-wash, anti-scam scams (been a victim of 419 crime? We'll get your money back for you - at a price!) and more.

Good, well-meaning people get tricked. Consider this woman:

From: XXX XXX Jennings
To: Amanda Fairheart-Smythe
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 12:09:16 -0600 (Central Standard Time)

Dear Amanda Fairheart-Smythe,

I wish I had received this email over 3 years ago. This man has stolen all that I had saved and money that I borrowed. I heard from his Mother (?) telling me a sad story that she was dying from Aids and wanted me to take her children as my own when she died. She had set up an Inheritance account and put it in my name. How stupid could I have been? What I sent was to cover legal fees, legal documents, etc... The money was never sent here. I have heard in the last couple of days from the bank and have found out that Kwesi Bandermann and others are thieves. Why did it take over 3 years to find this out? I would never put your informants life in danger. My life is in danger now as well as my family. I have received threats this week. I am so afraid now and don't know what to do. How did you know that Kwesi Bandermann was expected to arrive here by plane? He did not arrive and I pray to God he doesn't. How did you get this email address? Only 2 people had it. It was Mr. Richard Meddings and Kwesi Bandermann. I can tell you the whole story if you need it.

Sincerely,
XXX XXX Jennings

All she wanted to do was adopt some children whose mother had died of AIDS. She was scammed over 3 years and lost vast amounts of money. Greedy? I don't think so.

Also consider the vast number charity scams. Less than 2 days after the tsunami killed over 200,000 people in Asia on Boxing Day 2004, scam letters were being circulated. People responded to these not because they were greedy but because they were generous and wanted to help those in trouble.

Bwahahahahahahahahaaaa!!!!
*falls off chair*
Ow. Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

Join the club. :P

If the victim were honest, he'd simply say "no, those aren't my chips" and walk away and be done with it. The con works because the victim wants to take part in getting something he didn't earn, thus his dishonesty

He's still stupid and gullible, though.

Being fools must run in the family since neither his parents or uncle recognized the scam.

So, all the "good" scams work best on greedy cheaters? Fine. So "you can most effectively cheat a dishonest man" is true, but you have already been upbraided with countless examples of honest people being cheated precisely because of their naivete and trust, and expecting people to be as honest as they are.

@mariospants:

A little unfair for the whole continent of Africa. Yes anything involving Nigeria should draw an instant red flag, but there are actual countries and even Nigerians who are honest people. It's still very surprising that people still fall for this scam given the amount of time it has been around. When I was 14 years old I received the good ol' South African lottery winner email and for a brief moment believed I was an actual winner. However, that little voice in the back of my head told me to do a quick internet search and see if this was legit. What do know it wasn't and ever since that day I have known better than to trust anything sent requesting bank details through email. Unfortuanately for this guy, it was a very expensive lesson learned.

I think I might actually respect the guy a little more if this were the case. Tough call though...con-man vs gullible, crybaby jackass.

Maybe this guy is smarter than he looks. Maybe he just scammed his parents and uncle out of 150K and blamed it on some poor innocent Nigerians.

There are plenty of scams that do snag people by promising money, but it takes all kinds to make a scam world.

[consumerist.com]

Honest people don't try to claim "inheritance" from people they're not related to, like this kid did.

All the good scams target people's greed and willingness to do something they know is wrong when they think they won't get caught. The reason this is true is because those people are less likely to balk halfway through, because they've got something to lose, now, by backing out.

One of the commonest street scams involves two "strangers" and a mark. Imagine you're in Vegas on the strip. A "stranger" approaches you with a bag of chips and says he found them -- are they yours? Being honest, you naturally say no. Then another "stranger" -- actually an accomplice of the first guy -- approaches. He suggests that the three of you cash in the chips and split the money. After that follows some debate about who will take the chips inside and bring the cash back. Stranger #1 offers, but Stranger #2 says he thinks he will disappear with the money. After some back and forth, you find you've agreed to go inside with Stranger #1,while Stranger #2 waits in case the real owner shows up... and both of you agree to give Stranger #2 $100 to hold as "earnest money" so that he knows the two of you won't skip out on him. Inside the casino, Stranger #1 disappears on you! You try to cash the chips and find, of course, they are fake. You rush back outside to look for Stranger #2... who has vanished with your $100.

This scam works *precisely* because the victim is honest. When Stranger #2 agrees to "trust" the victim with the chips, and Stranger #1 agrees to "trust" #2 with $100, the victim's own trust mechanisms lead him to reciprocate. The less honest the mark, the less likely this is to work. Fascinating, isn't it?

If it wasn't going to go to the Nigerians, it was going to someone sooner or later. It was just a matter of time. This kid's a poster child for not doing inheritances or trust funds.

Or marrying your cousin.

@homerjay wants Boston Legal back!: Lucky fucker. I never got the job of filmstrip advancer in shool.

COME. ON. It is IMPOSSIBLE to believe in such lies!

I don't know quite why mind you, but it seems a major component of the scam toolkit.

Truthfully he is lucky they didn't kidnap him. Or have "police" run in, and detain him unless some sort of bail was paid. I guess that sort of stuff wouldn't fly in London, but it is generally the next step when in other countries.

People who say you can't cheat an honest man probably also think you can judge someones personality with a firm handshake and a look in their eye.

[www.419eater.com]

I really dont feel bad for him...

I don't have too many memories of being in elementary school, but strangely enough that was one of them.

Wasn't he Mennonite or something?

The scenario that makes me picture is that they had a bunch of fake bills that looked real, with some type of stamp on them that would otherwise make you think it is no longer legal tender (Like, I dunno...do they mark the bills that are sent to be destroyed in any way?). Then, their magic "formula" removed the stamp, thus making it once again "legal tender".

Something like if you printed up a coupon for a free burger, and then the cashier takes a rubber stamp and stamps VOID on it in big letters, so you can't use it anywhere else. Then, if you could remove the stamp with some type of solvent, you could get another free burger.

@homerjay wants Boston Legal back!: Let's not forget the Billy Mays Big City Slider Station.

@humphrmi: Indeed, good point.

Sounds like his friends are better off without him.

I cannot imagine the amount of greed involved in this. On either side.

But come on! If someone has a magic formula that turns stamps into legal tender. THEY WILL NOT SELL IT TO YOU! THEY WILL MAKE STAMPS INTO MONEY. THEY WONT NEED YOUR MONEY!!!!

There is no indication in the article of exactly what the idiot told his family when asking them for money. They may not have known what he was doing.

I guess he should be glad they only wanted his money. He traveled to London to meet complete strangers. If something happened to him people wouldn't even know where to look...

Note: If it said otherwise in the article don't flame me. I'm too lazy/busy/uninterested-in-a-sob-story to read the article.

Epic Fail.

@AstroPig7: That's what I was wondering, too. I needed a good explanation to borrow my sister $75 last week to fix her car. How the hell do you explain away being 22 years old and needing $60,000?

That felt better.

Greed will only get you kicked in the nuts. We always ask "who'd fall for this?" when we read ridiculous sounding offers -- here he is folks, and all of his family too.

Don't blame the victim? Remember that saying "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me"? How many clues did he get that this was a scam? Mysterious foreign relatives, cash deposits need to be made, tax demand from an unknown country, magic liquid to turn paper into cash, bribe money and even more bribe money. Does any of this sound remotely legitimate? Even for a country bumpkin? I know they have lawyers in Leamington or he could've called a Windsor lawyer for advice.

*Nelson Muntz* Ha haaaaa!

Seriously, I don't feel sorry at all for this greedy dumb bastard.

Are there any honest people left in Africa?

Still pretty stupid to fall for something like this though.

I guess this explains why Nigerians keep trying, eventually you'll run into someone like this.

OMG IS THIS THE FIRST EMAIL HE EVER RECEIVES IN HIS ENTRIRE PATHETIC LIFE!!!!

MAN I WANNA SCREAM "YOU IDIOT"!

Actually, yes, caps, screaming.

But seriously, did this 22 year old just get his first pc and received his first spam mail and completely fell for it?!?!? How much of a moron can you be!?! I would somewhat feel sorry for a 70 year old lady being scammed like this since this whole 21st century is just too confusing for her to grasp, but for this 22 year old guy that should be living under a technology rock apparently was just living under a rock!

OMG!

The next person they prey on may not have the mental faculties to see through the scam and would be a genuine victim. I'm terrified that something like this will happen to my grandmother who is nothing but kind but is impaired by dementia.

The full article is something else. His familymembers are now out thousands of dollars and his friends won't talk to him. Which is sad until you realize that all these people fell for it too, because they lent him the money. Unbelievable.

@wdnobile: Chris Hansen did that on Dateline about 8 months ago. He even traveled to Europe to meet the "prince".

How do these idiots get their hands on 150,000? I couldnt get 150k together if it was for life-saving surgery for myself

@silver-bolt: He must have gotten all excited.

@racordes: The old saying is true : You can't cheat an honest man.

@Ecks: Only if you were laughing with him. Laughing AT him is fine.

This is where Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon."

So it never occurred to him that Nigeria doesn't have royalty. Fine.

So it never occurred to him that washing away a stamp with some special formula was a little odd. Fine.

So it never occurred to him that if these people wanted him to have "his" money, they would have just GIVEN IT TO HIM. Fine.

But did it ever occur to the stupid kid that if this was an INHERITANCE, then why wouldn't it be going to his Father, or Mother, or one of his Grandparents.

Darwin strikes again!

When oh when are we going to see the other end of the spectrum? You know when they show up to meet the scammers and instead the victime turns out to either be FBI or better yet, some gun toting redneck vigilante?