victims

This page discusses the victimology of email scams: who are the victims of the Nigerian email scam and other frauds?

It covers -

• introduction

     introduction

Preceding pages of this note highlighted that 419 scam victims are not restricted to what one Australian policeman naughtily described as "people whose knuckles drag on the ground and need help opening their email". The scam has instead snared a wide range of citizens, including those who are supposedly intelligent, upright and informed.

Media coverage often caters to a certain schadenfreude, with reports that distinguished academics, lawyers, psychologists and of course politicians have succumbed to a tempting offer of pain-free instant wealth.

We noted the Swiss professor who lost US$482,000 after being promised 25% of US$36 million. In 2006 prominent US psychologist and neuroscientist Louis Gottschalk - arguably experiencing difficulties of his own after gaining fame for diagnosing exPresident Reagan's alzheimers - was reported to have lost US$3m over a 10 year period. Christian psychotherapist John Worley ended up in a US prison over charges regarding bank fraud, money laundering and possession of counterfeit checks in sending money to Nigeria. Former Iowa congressman Edward Mezvinsky stole from clients, friends and of course his mother-in-law to cover losses from 419 scams. Mark Whitacre, an Archer Daniels Midland executive, spiralled to disaster after succumbing to the 419 offers.

David Maurer's 1940 The Big Con (New York: Anchor 1999) lamented that

As the lust for large and easy profits is fanned into a hot flame, the mark puts all his scruples behind him. He closes out his bank account, liquidates his property, borrows from his friends, embezzles from his employer or his clients. In the mad frenzy of cheating someone else, he is unaware of the fact that he is the real victim, carefully selected and fatted for the kill. Thus arises the trite but none the less sage maxim: 'You can't cheat an honest man'.

::