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I went to Nigeria to meet a man who scammed me

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Re: I went to Nigeria to meet a man who scammed me

#221

Post by Johnny555 »

kahrkunne wrote: post #220
n72 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some marvelous empathy.

Why should I express empathy to the guy who ("probably") illegally stole his elderly father's money? If you can't get it done legally (by getting the person declared mentally unfit) then it's nothing more than theft. Deciding on your own that a person, your father none the less, shouldn't be allowed to control their own money, is indefensible. If you think this is so, there's well-defined legal procedures to do this.…

At the time, his doctor and attorney said that while his behavior may have been out of character, it was not egregious enough to get a court order declaring him mentally incompetent. One of those professionals recommended (completely off the record and in literally whispered voice) the route that we followed.

Re: I went to Nigeria to meet a man who scammed me

#222

Post by [deleted] »

logicallee wrote: post #206
yesbabyyes wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks. Perhaps I might, not right now though. I'm not very worried about the association, these things aren't that secret. I can tell you though that there is some more disturbing things going on in Ghana, with what they call Sakawa Boys. Sakawa is the name for online scams. Sakawa Boys are more into carding/skimming, but there is a way darker side to Sakawa which I don't think is happening with the 419ers. The…

read this. also fascinating. yes, write it up if you find a good medium (hint hint) to publish it on. question: you write in one point here "I'm interested in magic myself." You can't say that to this crowd if you said it I would stop reading your article for credibility reasons. So if you believe that any kind of magic or spells exist (that aren't tricks), then you should separate out this belief from your report, b…

[deleted]

Re: I went to Nigeria to meet a man who scammed me

#223

Post by qb45 »

logicallee wrote: post #206
yesbabyyes wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks. Perhaps I might, not right now though. I'm not very worried about the association, these things aren't that secret. I can tell you though that there is some more disturbing things going on in Ghana, with what they call Sakawa Boys. Sakawa is the name for online scams. Sakawa Boys are more into carding/skimming, but there is a way darker side to Sakawa which I don't think is happening with the 419ers. The…

read this. also fascinating. yes, write it up if you find a good medium (hint hint) to publish it on. question: you write in one point here "I'm interested in magic myself." You can't say that to this crowd if you said it I would stop reading your article for credibility reasons. So if you believe that any kind of magic or spells exist (that aren't tricks), then you should separate out this belief from your report, b…

Why should he care about credibility? It's you asking for more :p

And magic is a shit test IMO.

Re: I went to Nigeria to meet a man who scammed me

#225

Post by joyeuse6701 »

kahrkunne wrote: post #220
n72 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some marvelous empathy.

Why should I express empathy to the guy who ("probably") illegally stole his elderly father's money? If you can't get it done legally (by getting the person declared mentally unfit) then it's nothing more than theft. Deciding on your own that a person, your father none the less, shouldn't be allowed to control their own money, is indefensible. If you think this is so, there's well-defined legal procedures to do this.…

Naive. There is no malice here aside from the one you project. Why are you conflating legality with morality? The father is clearly self destructive and going through legal ramifications to prove it does not serve anyone but the government, or one's self to cover their ass. Who cares if it's a father, mother, grandfather, boss, elderly person you care for, sister or other relation. That has little to no bearing on how one treats self destructive behavior.

Letting him have his money because he's your 'father' is no different an argument than letting X do Y because he's Z relation. It's a piss poor argument and doesn't hold.

"I'll let my alcoholic father drink some more because he's my father, and if I take away his drinks, well that'd be indefensible because I'd be stealing! He should be allowed to drink however much he wants. If I want to take his alcohol away I need a court order to prove that this is a morally acceptable act, because moral authority resides with the government! In fact, I'm worse than the punks around the corner who regularly steal alcohol from under his nose because they are unrelated despite crappy intentions, whereas my good intentions for his health and my relation as his son and son's should pay deference to their elders makes my act oh so terrible. " /sarcasm

Re: I went to Nigeria to meet a man who scammed me

#226

Post by walrus01 »

michael_h wrote: post #53

My mother in law is currently $150,000+ deep on a Facebook romance scam. I believe she's about to send him another $200k or so when her house is sold. Instead of living out her retirement in relative comfort, she will be scraping by on social security. Adult services can't help, because moonshot-level stupidity is not a mental disorder. She can't live with us, as she can no longer be trusted. She can't live on her ow…

There is a legal process for declaring somebody in your family (elderly parents, developmentally disabled persons, etc) incompetent and taking charge of their financial affairs as power of attorney, have you talked to a lawyer?

Re: I went to Nigeria to meet a man who scammed me

#227

Post by J-dawg »

UnfalseDesign wrote: post #56

There seems to be a lot of commenters here saying Johnny is playing the long con. Whereas I don’t entirely disagree, I think they are missing the point of the story. The point is not just that Johnny’s life improved from below average to average. The other point is that Maria’s life improved from average to above average. At an age where many Americans are retiring and spending their days trying to stay busy, Maria i…

I'd really like to understand your worldview better (and I don't mean that in a belligerent way) because I hope I can learn from it.

I really cannot muster any level of compassion for this guy. Sure he's poor, but he committed a planned, systematic, manipulative and horrible crime that can destroy the lives of very vulnerable people.

Just look at the current top comment in the thread for a personal experience of it. Somebody is systematically emptying that woman's retirement savings. This is not like a hungry person stealing some food or a bit of cash, people have their entire lives / retirements ruined by this stuff. I find it easier to have compassion for a pickpocket in the street than somebody like this.

And yes, I believe he really is playing the long con. I'm all for trying to understand people who have wronged us, and forgiving them too. But there is no way I could imagine giving money to somebody who had tried to pull something like that on me.

I'm not denigrating your way of looking at things. You are possibly a happier and less angry person than me. I just can't bring myself to agree.

Re: I went to Nigeria to meet a man who scammed me

#228

Post by qb45 »

donquichotte wrote: post #224

"Johnny: "You talk in parable´s. I can´t wait to see you"" I would never write back to somebody who uses the Idiot's Apostrophe.

It's Scamming 101 to use bad grammar and typos. Can you imagine what kind of PITA would it be to scam a pedant like you? They don't want you to even think about replying to them.

Re: I went to Nigeria to meet a man who scammed me

#230

Post by selimthegrim »

digler999 wrote: post #123
MichaelBurge wrote: post #54

Some people trick the scammers into traveling places, or losing money. They've managed to get them stranded for months in war-torn countries, to sell their cars for airline tickets, and gotten them thrown in prison in foreign countries for immigration violations. I have some family who was tricked by a scammer doing "Microsoft support" once, but we convinced her it was a scammer in time for the police to trace the ca…

I saw an article a while back about an older man, college professor I think, who fell for some "girl" in south America. She tricked him to flying to Peru, picking up a suitcase of dope, then flying it to Argentina where he was arrested. Never met the "girl" and still believes she was for real.

The man in question was Paul Frampton, a theoretical physicist at UNC and the 'girl' was ostensibly well-known model Denise Milani
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