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I’ve discovered that paper a couple years back and indeed, once you hear it it just makes total sense, in a funny way
by jlengrand 5y ago
I’ve discovered that paper a couple years back and indeed, once you hear it it just makes total sense, in a funny way
- jacquesm 5y agoNot so funny for some. One person I know, (80+) got scammed out of a reasonably large sum of money (very large for them, probably pocket change for HN). They could not imagine that people would be so mean as to feign an emergency to scam others. These assholes really hurt people.
- Clubber 5y agoYup, they're robbing old people of their life savings. It seems nobody seems to be doing anything to prosecute or even track these people down.
- cosmodisk 5y agoIt's an international crime most of the time, with operations that can be opened in a day. It doesn't help that local law enforcement in some countries actively covering these types of crimes.
- notum 5y agoThankfully, there's people who fight back: https://www.419eater.com/ https://www.419eater.com/
- jacquesm 5y agoIt looks as though the old forum is dead and the new one is here: https://aff.419eater.com/ https://aff.419eater.com/
- iotku 5y agoYep, often praying on good will or desperation of older generations. A lot of people think it's laughable that anyone would fall for "simple obvious scams" but I've met a good handful of older family and their more elderly friends who either fell to a scam or were only stopped once someone at a store questioned them as to why they were buying lots of gift cards all at once. In some cases scammers will work on people over a long period of time to gain their trust.
- teddyh 5y agoNB: “Preying”, not “praying”.
- jlengrand 5y agoYou may have misunderstood my comment. The way the introduction of the article is phrased is funny, what scammers do is horrifying. I've had people in my close family fall into debts to those folks, they target the weakest and literally go heaps and bounds to extract as much as they can from their 'mugus'. Not fun at all :S