To find it hard to feel sympathy for certain scam “victims”?

[MayThe4th]

I’m not talking about those who are taken in by bogus calls from HMRC, or their bank, or PayPal or Royal Mail and the list goes on. In Theory we should all know the signs and be aware, but it’s easy to see how some people can be taken in.

But I’m talking about those people who give hundreds of thousands to 419 scammers, or to scammers for winnings of a lottery they never entered. There was an article the other day about someone who fell for a bitcoin scam and within half an hour he had been scammed out of £400k.

I watched the tinder swindler on netflix and all I could think was wtf! I mean it would be one thing giving this man money, but these women went into debt for him.

And I can’t help but think that so many people fall for these kinds of scams purely out of greed.

They believe they will make the millions, they hope the bitcoin will pay off, the women in the tinder swindler were dazzled by the lifestyle.

If my husband spent the cost of my house transferring money to a Nigerian bank account it would be grounds for divorce.

IMO these kinds of “victims” aren’t the same as real victims of scams, the people who are prayed on by lowlife who rely on someone’s fear they will be arrested for not paying their taxes, or fearing their bank account has been hacked.

The 419 and tinder swindler scam victims aren’t really victims, they’re led by greed, and are prepared to lose whatever they have to to get what they want.

This is quite a good summary

Actually, lots of those 'games' have been shown to be troll farms. They ask those questions because the answers are often the answers to security questions, to reset your email/banking/paypal etc. It's not a single step to clearing out your savings, but with systematic data harvesting they can build up pictures that make it easier for you to be the target of a scam or identity theft.

SIL fell for a scam, basically fake shares and parted with 3k over the phone. To be honest she is thick as pig shit and dreadful with money. We have attempted many times to help her with finances when she has bewailed her situation. We have given up now. MIL has also been scammed but that’s because she does not understand technology at all.

I also have zero sympathy for parents who put their credit card details on devices and then Little Johnny spends thousands on cosmetics in game. I actually don’t think refunds should be given. Because you the parent did not password protect your card or worse you let your child have it.

The 419 and tinder swindler scam victims aren’t really victims, they’re led by greed, and are prepared to lose whatever they have to to get what they want.

I don’t agree in the case of the tinder swindler. Most of the women were in love with him and he deceived them with help- he had a “bodyguard” and he had an “ex” and their child all in on it to fool these women about who he was. He had numerous fake websites and fake news published about himself that corroborated his false identity & fake passports/ID.

One woman, he had proposed to her and they were engaged before she sent him a penny. She’d been literally house hunting for a place to live together. Another was a close friend of his theyd spent an entire summer travelling around Europe together before he borrows money, then paid back twice what he owed her before he then borrowed more and more which he never paid back.

It wasn’t greed but emotional attachment.

We're only now starting to unpick the complexity of why people believe what they believe to be true - TLDR brains are complex and imperfect.
Pretty much everyone has done something they shouldn't have - eaten that extra pudding, spent more than they could afford, snapped at an innocent person, slacked at work when they know it'll create more to do later on.
This is just the SuperSize version of Unhelpful Brain Steer You Wrong.

YES it's maddening, but getting mad gets nobody anywhere. We need to understand the process where critical faculties come online - or fail to! - and what society can do to help with that.
Particularly - how to deal with stubborn and perverse beliefs ("he really loves me and will bring the money back").
But the thing is, nobody wants to be a victim because THAT MEANS THEY ARE PUBLICLY KNOWN TO BE WEAK AND GULLIBLE and nobody wants that! As mammals we have an evolutionary interest in not being the first on the prey list!

You really don't understand how doxxing works then.

A large volume of small snippets of information to build and steal a profile - plus other friends and families linked accounts. You might consider giving away Grannies Maiden Name being insignificant - but if your children gave away their Grannies maiden name, and their accounts were linked to yours?

Crack on though, you know best.

Sure, it's easy to feel we'd never fall for the most blatant cons when we don't need to. And to be smug about not clicking on the dodgy link you got sent, or not inadvertently putting your data out there for scammers to gather, all that. I still worry that the next level of scam will be the one that catches me out. So I try really quite hard not to judge.

Photo Sherlock.

Came in very very useful when I decided to join Tinder.

I know one woman who fell for this.

She was 50, divorced, went to Morrocco and married a 24 year old waiter and sold her house here first - twelve months later she was out on her ear, and he took her for every penny.

Now she rents a flat back here and is totally broke. She will rent for the rest of her life.

It boggles the mind.

I have no sympathy for any scam victims tbh, not just the greedy and stupid ones.

My grandad got conned out a LOT of money by a young woman he met through his church. He thought he was engaged to her, bought her a ring and everything, paid for her to go to college, rent on an apartment which she said she was getting ready for them to live together in (said she needed money for furniture, repairs etc), said she needed money for wedding stuff like a dress, to send back to her family in a different country…all in all it was 100s of thousands of quid 🙈Eventually she dumped him very suddenly and left the country. On Facebook she was married to a man her own age less than a year later. We all thought it was fairly creepy that he would get engaged to a woman younger than some of his grandkids anyway but he had a lot of problems that made him vulnerable and in his 80s he was more so than ever.
A woman I know has fallen for some scams that most people would never ever fall for but she has autism and it makes her vulnerable. She was also being bullied online very badly and nobody knew for ages.
I kind of get what you’re saying but scammers cast their nets widely and some people that fall for them really can’t help it.

I have just had the gas on in text form this morning

Snort! That's exactly the story isn't it!

Yes I would feel sorry for these people, especially as OP said with "official" scams pretending to be companies, some are very sophisticated now with proper logos, numbers and even correct spelling (which used to be such a giveaway).

However the romance scammers I just can't get my head around. Why would young, lithe Stavros want to marry Tracy and move to Darlington? Its mind boggling.

I can only feel sympathy for the elderly or those who are clearly vulnerable. A lot of it is caused by greed, vanity, stupidity, not usually poor and desperate people. R4 Consumer programme has these stories on every week, and they never cease to amaze me, particularly as there can't be many who haven't heard of these scams yet still fall for them. Also not sure why banks pay these people back most of the time, as the cost of this is surely borne by all the other non-scammed customers. There's a woman on Twitter who has great fun stringing along 'romance' scammers, BeckyHolmeshatesspinach, if you want to see these bastards having the piss taken out of them.

I've been watching For Love or Money and the same scenarios pop up time and time again - illness of person or child, gold or similar being impounded, person being imprisoned etc etc. It plumbed new depths with them using the profile of a dead man 😓. The minute any of these supposed romeos asks for money, end it. These scams have been going on for years and with gullible people, will still continue. I've had Instagram requests from "good looking, religious, American widowers". Do I add them - no, of course not. I really don't have sympathy for the victims - if something seems to be too good to be true, it probably is.

Greed, loneliness, people pleasing, ignorance of technology (usually happens with old people), attention seeking and "not knowing your place in life" are all vulnerabilities. Romance online scammers don't chose the pretty successful stronger looking woman, they pick the non pretty mousy type who just widowed and tell her what she needs to hear. These people are con artists, they know their prey. The Tinder swindler was a convo of romance online scammer with gold digger. How you can jump in a private plane with a stranger you just met two days ago on the internet is mind boggling.

It's not that I don't have empathy but sometimes that can be pushed very hard.

I'm old enough to remember the Barlow Clowes affair in the late eighties. The company dealt in Government bonds and when the company went bust took hundreds of investors, mostly pensioners, money with it. In the end some got some money back because the Government accepted their oversight was too slack. The thing is B-C advertised in the same place as all the other bond dealers but offered a much better rate of return. So their clients ignored that the other 20 companies offered almost identical return rates and went with the one company that offered a lot better return. Caveat emptor went out of the window when tempted by money it seems.

A good friend started an online 'romance' chatting most evenings and messaging through the day with this guy. Thing is she'd been interested in the first place because he only lived half an hour away Yet he always had an excuse not to meet. After several months of this myself and a couple of other friends ganged up on her over a glass of wine and finally it sunk in. Luckily he never asked for money, I guess he just got his jollies from stringing women along, usually several at a time it turned out. And she's no fool normally.

🤣🤣

I was watching the Netflix documentary on Wirecard the other day. Big, complex money laundering operation. But the part that struck me most was that the (innocent) man whose address was being used as the company's registered address explained that he'd been approached on the street and offered £50 to sign paperwork without reading it. He spoke about this as though he still thought that was a perfectly normal thing to do! I can't think of any other scenario that screams "FRAUD" so obviously.

What is worse is that any company can register at companies house with any residential address in the country, as there are no verification measures in place.

A side note that memes like "what is your pornstar name - take the name of your first pet + the name of the road you grew upon" are classics for getting your details. So many security questions are based on "firsts" like first best friend, first school, etc. Publishing your answers on a public forum is asking for trouble (sometimes I see them on here, too). A lot of people could do worse than think of the phrase "if it's too good to be true, it is".

I don’t agree in the case of the tinder swindler. Most of the women were in love with him and he deceived them with help- he had a “bodyguard” and he had an “ex” and their child all in on it to fool these women about who he was. He had numerous fake websites and fake news published about himself that corroborated his false identity & fake passports/ID.

He also made one woman hide in her house with all the lights off while the supposed 'enemies' who were coming for him drove up her drive. In that situation, when you think some shady mafia person is about to break into your home and you're literally scared for your life, would you really think 'maybe my boyfriend's staging all this to trick me into giving him money in the future'? I admit I went into the documentary wondering who on earth would be so stupid as to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars to a man they'd just met a month ago, but having seen it I actually can understand why they thought it was real.

I wouldnt be too scathing about people who are scammed, it could happen to you. Nobody is immune you know. Hope you never have to eat your words.

Regarding ppl who give money away on line if you watched the programme in depth you will see they are lonely women. They are being paid attention to by men and it makes them feel wanted etc and they truly believe they are in a relationship.
One woman even had bought a wedding dress thinking she was going to get married. Even when her son intervened and told her what was going on she wouldnt listen.

I do have sympathy for these victims of crime. People can't help it if they are born with a low IQ.