>>>>>What I don't get is how anyone falls for this stuff. And they must or it would stop. Are people really that stupid? Same with the morons who go to a bank to give someone money to get more money. Idiots.
>>>>
>>>>Many are vulnerable for one reason or another:
>>>>
>>>>http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/15/060515fa_fact
>>>>
>>>>This American Life recently had a story about scamming the scammers
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>http://consumerist.com/5050068/listen-to-these-vigilantes-scam-nigerian-419-scammers
>>>
>>>I don't get that article. He wasn't a victim. True, he followed through with it further than anyone I know, afterall, most just recognize it as spam and delete, but he did verify with the bank and didn't lose any money, correct? I guess he could be considered a victim in the sense that he lost time devoted to verifying...
>>>
>>>As promised, in late August, 2001, Worley received a check for forty-seven thousand five hundred dollars, purportedly from one such investor. It was from an account belonging to the Syms Corporation, the discount-clothing chain whose slogan is “An Educated Consumer Is Our Best Customer.” Worley was wary. He called the Fleet Bank in Portland, Maine, where the check had been drawn. The bank told him it was an altered duplicate of a check that Syms had paid to the Maryland office of an international luggage manufacturer.
>>
>>There are 6 pages to the article, you need to read at least page 2 and 3. He does send money.
>
>

>and goes way beyond that. Wow. In the end, he got what he deserved. I don't think he was a victim.

I don't think he is a victim either. Jay's original question was 'How does anybody fall for that?' I thought the story was interesting in how it showed the mindset of someone taken in by this sort of scheme. To the casual observer, the whole scheme is preposterous but people have been taken in by this swindle for hundreds of years.