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It's a lot older than that; like 16th century. It's actually amazing how close the modern variants are to the original Spanish Prisoner scam.
by jsnell 9y ago
It's a lot older than that; like 16th century. It's actually amazing how close the modern variants are to the original Spanish Prisoner scam.
- craftyguy 9y agoGot any good examples of these early scams?
- jsnell 9y agoI'm not aware of any good centralized collection of them. But the articles written on the amazing durability of the scam usually include an example or two: https://priceonomics.com/the-email-scam-with-centuries-of-history/ https://priceonomics.com/the-email-scam-with-centuries-of-hi... http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/spanish_prisoner_swindle.html http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/spanish_prisoner_swin... https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-9-lives-of-the-spanish-prisoner-the-treasure-dangling-scam-that-wont-die https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-9-lives-of-the-spa...
- craftyguy 9y agoWow, these are very similar to the 'modern' scam emails. Thanks for sharing this, I had no idea how old this scam was.
- Elv13 9y agoIn the middle chivalry (loose rules of wars, feud and honor) required to spare the enemies that surrendered, but you could take them prisoners for ransoms. It was a totally normal means of financing warfare and profiting from conflicts. Knights were paid using land taxes (not enough) and from loots/randoms (potentially a lot if you were good at it). I guess it was totally usual back then to expect a letter asking for a random for a nobleman to war. If the dude was dead and a the letter a fake, you had no way to know.
- narrator 9y ago>I guess it was totally usual back then to expect a letter asking for a random for a nobleman to war. So that's how random number generation worked in the days before computers! :p