Fun With Scammers
Mashable has a hilarious exchange between a scammer and an Englishman called James Veitch. Seems James has been spending two years replying to all those spam emails that come to your inbox asking you to hide the wealth of a Nigerian prince, or purchase their cheap Viagra.
I used to have a boss who liked replying to the money scammers. Nigerian princes, lottery ticket officials, stranded tourists, you name it, they would all reply and stretch out the con game as long as he let them. He would string them along for a time, asking questions and insisting on various types of proof until they lost their temper or stopped replying. Sometimes he would send them several emails asking why they had cut him off, as if a new friendship had been severed. He wasn’t very good at speed typing though, so sometimes I would type his emails for him. I never got over how stupid scammers think you are.
Imagine how many people have lowered the bar they have for stupid to the point where they will blissfully say the crap they said to my boss and James without blinking an eye.
Moral of the story? If you didn’t buy a ticket, you didn’t win. And if someone who doesn’t know you wants to give you millions of dollars–don’t try to take it, okay? Just…don’t.
It’s Election Day on Monday, and I’ll be headed out to vote, so stay thirsty, my friends, and have one on me as the bars are–sadly–officially closed on Election Day here until after 6pm.
Tagged: authors, books, con artists, cons, Dot Con, email scams, internet scams, James Veitch, Mashable, novels, publishing, scammers, writing
