How To Beat A Con Man

It is often said that none of us are safe from the con man; that within all of us, there lurks a degree of gullibility which con men can recognize and easily exploit despite our best efforts to avoid those situations.

Well I am here to tell you that I have never been conned and never will be conned. Whenever somebody comes to me with any sort of money-making plan I don't make even the slightest effort to discover whether or not it is a legitimate business offer. I simply say, "You'll have to speak to my accountant about that." So far not one person has ever asked how to get in touch with my accountant! Not one! So the con starts and ends right there.

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The following letter is typical of those sent out by the 21st century con men known as 419 scammers. The 419 scam is a modern variation of a centuries old con known as The Spanish Prisoner. If you bother to read the letter you will see that a young man has found himself in a troubling situation. There is $177 million dollars held in trust for him, but his situation prevents him from gaining access to the funds so he wonders if it would be OK to have the cash moved into your bank account. If you agree to help him, he will let you keep $53 million (30%) while you transfer the remaining $124 million into an account he can access.

There are three obvious signs that it's a scam, and a particularly inept scam at that.

(1) The whole letter is written in the uppercase. It looks stupid. No sensible person would even bother to read it.

(2) The letter arrives unsolicited from someone you've never heard of. No sensible person is going to regard it as a genuine offer.

(3) The amount of cash ($177 million) is so large that no sensible person is ever going to consider such a ludicrous proposition.

But why is the scam so obvious? Why doesn't the con man write a more business-like letter; something a bit more believable? And why doesn't he mention a more realistic sum of money; perhaps $177 thousand instead of $177 million?

Well if he did that, the con man would get thousands of replies from people who have believed the story so far, and now want a bit more information about the deal. None of those people are silly enough to go all the way with the scam, so the  con-man will be wasting hours, days, and weeks, trying to convince these potential victims who will ultimately NOT be convinced.

So the scammer aims his letter at the dumbest, most gullible humans on the planet. He weeds out all the sensible people with his poorly written letter with its idiotic claims and unbelievable sums of money. No sensible person ever responds to his letter so he never has to waste time dealing with them. 

But some people do respond. They are the real idiots. They will believe anything. And they are the people the con man is prepared to spend time with - because they are dopey enough to fall for the con.