Falling for it

I think that after a few years of meeting with conmen of various shapes and sizes, I am often amazed by the way in which conmen operate. Being conned is not a terribly nice experience, but I think if you look at every con or scam, it teaches you valuable lessons. I look at the Nigerian letter scam. The guys who run this scam are no angles and you would definitely not give any of these guys a nomination for a Sainthood. Having said that, I think allot of these scams say more about the guys who get scammed than the guys operating the scam. Let's put it this way, the scams have been running for several decades and we've had more than enough warnings about them. Most of the scams are not even clever - there's a formula to them and if you receive one, you've actually receive the lot. Yet, the scammers continue - why? Because these guys continue to make a good living out of it - proving that the market for scams is no where close to being saturated. We read about how conmen attack the vulnerable. We get upset when an old lady loses her life savings to some sleazy con man. But quite often you will find that the con men succeed because they appeal to the worst in us - they appeal to our greed. Again, look at the Nigerian lottery and letter scams. Common sense will tell you that it's fishy when you're promised a couple of million but need to deposit a couple of hundred to some stranger. Yet allot of otherwise clever people fall for this - why? - They get greedy and see zeros without considering reality. When you look at things like it this way, conmen are not as bad as they're made out to be.

I haven't fallen for any of these, but there are the old fashioned cons run by family and friends. I've fallen for those. You know, "I'm out of money and my kid just got a deep cut. I really need to take him to the doctor!" You give them money, and find out that they had a keggar party the next day. Oh, that feels horrid! (Worse, they don't even bother to invite you! Talk about adding insult to injury) Desperate people do desperate things. They want a miracle so badly, they'll take any chance hanging in front of them. There's desperation, then there's desperation.

When I hear of these scams I can't help but wonder why people do such things and how these people fall for them. If only the conmen and women would use their intelligence to do something productive and legal, just imagine how well off they could be. If they would educate themselves and get a real job they could probably do real well in life. I haven't been scammed but have heard of others that have. I don't have any money to begin with so no one would want to target me.

You missed the ones whih promise that you will loose wieght like sweat with in fifteen days if you buy such and such product. I got conned by a person selling some 7$ secrets e book. It was a complete waste of money , I did get the book though but it was a completley useless thing. I got connned by a person here only on mylot nad may be he was on this site that I went ahead and boughthis e-book full of useless material. needless to say he never retuirned my 10$ even though he promised that in adertising. A word of caution, een if you make friends here do not trust them with your money ever. I learned that hard way.

No I have never been conned. I didn't fell for it also. I will not show interest in any such thing that seems too generous to distribute a lot of money for very little investment or activity. all such things turn out to be a scam. Whenever I see that something looks to lucrative to believe, I take away my hands from that. It is not so easy to earn money.

It seems that everyone is blaming the victim, when in fact the real problem is the conner! I don't believe that people 'Fall for it' as you put it on purpose! Haven't you even been robbed, betrayed, bullied, lied to?! I don't think that you had fallen for it in these cases didn't you. There's no point in judging these people as miserable, poor, greedy or desparate because my dear someday it might be you or myself in that position. Instead of wasting out time blaming these persons, we could do better by trying to make those around us more aware of these kinds of scams. Who knows maybe we might prevent someone from being conned.