Morality Question for Internet Marketers

[billbenson]

I feel sorry for the elderly who are frequently preyed upon and not up to date on things. Also, remember that not everybody is that up to date, particularly with computer stuff. That provides an opportunity for both the scammers and legitimate marketers.

I get Nigerian scam sort of emails all the time; mostly to buy products. My scam filter is location, real bad english, ask if you take a credit card in the first email, yahoo email address. I normally send a heavily inflated quote if I'm suspicious. I recently did a deal with Indonesia which made me nervous. Turned out to be ligit, so you can't always read a book by its cover.

But I get these emails every month. The people that get taken are the ones that are elderly and / or don't spend time on the internet.

Yes I agree, just like buying a bad stock everyone should do due diligence, but show me someone who never made a mistake and I'll show you a liar.

Greed is a big part of it though. Not just the scam artists, but the victims.

[vangogh]

Bill I agree with you about the elderly, but the odd thing is every time I hear about someone falling for the Nigerian scam it's someone who'd between 35-50 and someone who should really know better.

[billbenson]

I worked for a company for a short period of time that got taken for 60k to Nigeria. They did international business, the order passed through the sales guys hands, accounting, secretarial, and shipping. Every single hand that touched the paperwork knew better. They were trained to double check each other. Actually pretty surprised nobody got fired as the owner was a hot head &%%$.

Came in various mornings to find things like holes punched in doors. Owner was a cheap hothead. Well run clean operation though. 30 or so employees and they had to do $1M in sales a month. All internet BTW.

[vangogh]

Makes you wonder how they didn't catch it. That's what I mean though. Seems like this scam doesn't catch the elderly, but people being a little greedy, wanting to believe that some prince they never heard of will really give them millions.

By the way just how large is the Nigerian royal family? At least 100 different exiled princes have contacted me in the last few years. That's a pretty big family.

[orion_joel]

I worked for a company that got taken for over $100K in Notebook computers, about 8 years ago. The order was placed from i think Thailand i believe and paid on credit card, and the biggest issue was that one of the sales guys was actually in on the deal, and was out of their before they could fire him.

Personally i do not imagine how pulling such a scam could leave you better off then staying on doing your job. Seriously even if he got a majority, it would have still been less then he would have earned that year staying in the job.

[billbenson]

Forgot to mention above; using multiple credit cards is a red flag. I have had Nigeria orders as well that hit every red flag. I just ship really late on those.

Corey, if you are out there, is there any way to see if a credit card is valid? There used to be a site that showed what bank a card was on so you could call them. Visa shut them down.

I just used the wait 30 days approach on suspect charges. Can't tell though, good orders can look fraudulent. Could be an employee going around purchasing, but it's a valid order??

[Steve B]

I think it's actually easier to see how the company with so many people touching the paperwork got scammed. It's called GroupThink. Nobody took personal responsbility for their part of the transaction and/or assumed that someone before or after them would have stopped it if it wasn't legit.

I think age is only one factor. There are a lot of truly feeble minded 35 years olds out there too. I don't mean that in a deragatory way - I'm talking about people who are on the verge of needing to be institutionalized. I'm sure there are plenty of people that get scammed that should know better too, but I'd stop short of saying I don't feel sorry for them. It's not against the law to be greedy. If they participated in something that they didn't think was legal AND it ended up a scam, then I don't have any sympathy for them at all. From what I remember about those Nigerian royalty scams they are ridiculous scenarios, but if you were to believe their story (due to extreme naiveness, or mental incapacity of some sort) I don't think it sounded like you would be participating in anything illegal.

[vangogh]

Steve, you're probably right about the group think thing. In those cases though my sympathy isn't there for the people getting scammed. Think about this particular scam. It's not someone trying to deal with a company on a business level. It comes in addressed to an individual with the usual poor English, spelling, and grammar. The email claims a Nigerian prince has escaped something and has millions in the bank, but he needs your money to clear his money in the bank. If you agree to transfer thousands of your dollars to his account, he'll be able to free up his money and share it with you.

For a business to fall for something like that is pretty shameful for the business. If you tell me some elderly man with Alzheimer's fell for this than I absolutely feel sympathy for that person and place all the blame squarely on the spammer. I'd feel the same sympathy for anyone regardless of age if the person isn't really completely in charge of their faculties. But if you tell me a business fell for this or the average person who does have their wits about them, it's harder to have sympathy for them. They most likely fell for this because of their own greed.

[Harold Mansfield]

I worked for a guy about a year and a half ago that would do any business with anyone in Africa, period.
He had been taken a while back with a wire transfer for about $10k. It passed all of the checks, passed the banks scrutiny, cash was in the account and everything.

Weeks after the product was shipped the bank contacted him and told him the transfer was indeed from a fraudulent bank and the cash did not really exist.

He got stuck, but I always thought of how unfair it was for the bank who approved the transfer, and showed the cash, not to be held responsible for their own lack of security and checks. I mean that is what they do. The are in the money business. They are supposed to know every trick in the book to protect us...isn't that why we give them our money ?

[billbenson]

That's weird eborg. For my indonesia deal, I set up a separate checking account and talked with the bank manager at several different branches. They all said that a wire transfer was like cash.

Steve, as for so many people touching the paperwork, that guy had a really good system. He held everyone responsible for any error, publicly berated them for errors, and fired people. He was a real a## but the system worked quite well. I think the reason nobody got fired is his pet star salesman did the order.