Scams piling on scams

[AndyK]

Of the various scammers and bottom-feeder, there are few lower than those running the "recovery scams."

Recovery scams are carefully crafted to appear to provide assistance to scam victims in the recovery of the victims' lost funds and, sometimes, the capture and prosecution of the original scammers.

There have been recovery scams created behind several of the 'Nigerian' scams, the NESARA scam, several of the 'free money' and mortgage/debt elimination scams and they all have two things in common.

First, they all share the wooshing sound as they suck even more money out of the pockets of the original victims.

Second, they never produce anything other than excuses as to why more time and money is needed to fund the recovery effort and punish the original scammers.

The common philosophy of the people who organize these scams is simple: If someone can be fooled and scammed once, they can be taken again.

[noblepa]

I have never fallen for the Nigerian scams, although I constantly receive the emails.

A few times, I have received emails from someone purporting to be from the Nigerian Ministry of Justice, or some such agency, offering to reimburse me for my "losses". I just need to provide my name, address, occupation, telephone number and social security number.

Riiiiiiigggghhhhhtttt!!!!!!!!!

I still don't understand why people fall for those scams. Why in the world would a Nigerian prince (or any other perfect stranger) want to give me millions of dollars? Even if the offer was real, its pretty obvious to me that it would be breaking money-laundering laws, both in the US and Nigeria.

I guess that desperate people will grab at any straw that comes along.

[fortinbras]

The Nigerian scam is a modernization of the old old Spanish Prisoner fraud: I am in a third world prison, I could bribe my way out but my money is hidden and I dare not tell anyone here where it is or that person would simply take it for themselves and leave me to rot, so I am asking you to front me the money and ....

In the case of the Nigerian scam the line is We have huge sums of money in a bank account in the deceased's name but if it transfers to someone in this wretched country the inheritance taxes and/or corrupt officials would take most of it, on the other hand we could arrange a bank transfer to your account ....

Part of the fun after losing your life savings to the scammers is trying to get the Nigerian govt to have sympathy on you for losing your shirt while trying to cheat the very government you're now asking to help you.