419ers take Canadian for $150,000 A Canadian man who fell for a 419 scam was taken for $150,000 by advance fee fraudsters who conducted a textbook operation to fleece their victim. John Rempel of Leamington, Ontario, got an email back in 2007 from "someone claiming to be a lawyer with a client named David Rempel who died in a 2005 bomb attack in London", the …
I hope El Reginald's vitriolic correspondents will show this guy a little compassion in their commenting. He doesn't need to be told he's a chipstick, he has enough people round him reminding him of that fact. He could well see these comments.
Go easy. He is still the victim of a crime (as much as of his own naivete).
"I never get calls anymore from my friends."
I'm pretty sure that once they actually get up off the floor and can breathe properly again, he will be at the top of their list of people to call...
And this guy was Canadian you say?? I wonder how long ago he decided to make the move to north of the border...
Why do people keep falling for these things? The amount of times advance fee has been covered in the media you'd think most people would know better.
I guess it just highlights how greedy people can be - especially when it looks like an easy way to get money. *sigh*
Suppose we just have to wait for next months article about the next idiot who's lost $90K to 419's......
It's damn hard to say what you want to say when in the back of your head there's this niggling feeling that Ms. Bee may well reprimand us holier than thou wise men (and women) for being slightly less than sympathetic towards the bozo.
55k from uncle + 60k from family leaves 35k of his own money. How does a 22 year old idiot manage to accumulate 35k to lose?
As soon as money is mentioned greed takes over!
My brother in law was telling me about how he was going to make lots of money on e-bay... cos he found someone prepared to buy his cheapo digital camera for lots more than he put it on at.
I gave him the obligatory withering look - when he told me that he had shipped it to Nigeria... "but I can make loads".
Never saw camera, or money, again!
This idiot (and all the others caught out by 419 scams) are quite happy to break local and international laws to get their hands on money that isn't theirs. They are attempting to commit fraud but end up being the victims. They deserve no sympathy.
If they were honest they'd do what the vast majority do with these emails, delete them.
If it weren't for the fact that it was all a con, this guy would have quite happily taken part in a huge fraud to net himself money. It's only his and his families stupidity that is preventing this guy from being a criminal himself and facing jail time. He should be thankful!
That people believe that someone tracked them down to pay them a large sum of money, to their email address, rather than postal address or telephone.
I mean, seriously. I don't understand where people get the money to pay these things either. $6k CAS is 2 months wages for me.. This guy was splashing it out on flights so people could buy 'fluid' to 'clean' dirty money.
Pro scammers, you can tell because they use so many scams, mixed into the bigger picture. E.g. some scammers sell 'dirty' notes and 'cleaning fluid' without the whole inheritence, fee-up-front, bit.
I wonder if they offered him some quality speakers out the back of a van too.
...Dr Umga Banga from the Nigerian Rothschild Bank that I've been in communication with regarding my inheritance from a very very very distant friend of a cousin's wife's uncle "might" not be who he seems to be?
Do you think I should stop making payments to claim this $18.3 million I was lead to believe I was entitled to?
My God, I think I've been conned!
Is there anyone here willing to lend me $100,000 while I claim the $500,000 I've recently just paid out, Of course I'll use your bank details to prove I'm genuine, just send me the details.
Many good greetings and salutational thanks.
Albert Einstein is supposed to have said "Only two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity - and I'm not entirely certain about the first one".
Yes, the man is a plonker of the stature of a Rodney - it does make you wonder how he manages to navigate the streets of a major city without being run over and killed.
However, there are very few of us that have never made a mistake, and sometimes they are absolute corkers. The next time that you screw up, just remember how you laughed at someone else for being a mug.
The problem is that our present day society nurtures defectives like this and prolongs the influence of their genetic preponderance to homerism. Prevention of natural selection defies the natural order of the universe. It must be stopped right now before we cause our own extinction.
Is it that early victims of the 419ers didn't get reported, or is there a sudden upsurge in rich morons falling for this con?
I just find it incredible, that with all the news reports, with full details of the kind of stories the scammers use, that anyone could still fall for these scams.
Not sure that "stupid" really covers it. There must be a large component of "living under a rock" in there somewhere.
Stupid and greedy = lesson learnt (and it's a lesson to us all)
or
Clever and greedy = he scammed his family (any proof the scammers existed?)
If he genuinely thought the money was legit and was planning to spend it altruistically then I guess greed may not have been a motive, in which case he and his family get my sympathy (but Mr Occam is smiling with a very Sweeny Todd smile).
It's not that none of us screw up - everyone does. I will admit I have, once, almost clicked on a scam e-mail whilst tired and tipsy.
However, there's a difference between a one off act of stupidity and repeated occurences over an extended period of time involving multiple people where not one of you questions what's going on. At some point these people must have been fully awake and sober. I mean, why?
I'd have difficulty believing it regardless of the source. Then again, whilst I wouldn't mind several million quid, I doubt it's ever going to happen except through hard work and a lot of luck.
When I got the email from the daughter of a diamond miner from Zimbabwe, now living in Lagos, offering me 10% of her dead dad's fortune for helping her get it out of the country (she needed a bank account in a different name at a Western bank for some reason) I thought it prudent to go there in person and investigate. While waiting for her one night on a suburban football field I was kidnapped by a gang of ruffians. They allowed me access to my email account so that I could email friends and family to request funds but unfortunately everyone thought it was some sort of scam and that it wasn't actually me. What a misunderstanding!
"This idiot (and all the others caught out by 419 scams) are quite happy to break local and international laws to get their hands on money that isn't theirs. They are attempting to commit fraud but end up being the victims."
Not all. Remember the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami? The scam charity appeals started within hours.
There are also lottery scams, pet scams, auction scams, orphan scams, contract killer scams, etc. None of which require the victims to believe they are doing anything illegal.
They may or may not be stupid, but so what? Nobody deserves to loose money to scammers.
Mine's the one with 419eater on the back.
Dear Mr J Rempel.
My Name is Special Agent Ghotya Dosh, I work with a private firm which recovers stolen or scammed money from across the world.
I have great news for you, During recent Investigations we have been able to track down a group of scammers, operating in Nigeria, we have recovered over $16 million dollars of scammed cash and according to thier finanace records, $150,000 of that money belongs to you.
I must inform you that we are not a free service and our normal operating charge of 10% of total money recovered is now due and payable up front.
This Fee covers the cost of recovery as well as the retun of your money using an armed escort service to a location of your choosing.
A 10% finders fee off $15,000 is now due and can be sent to our agancy account via Paybuddy
F.o.o.l@paybuddy.com
Financial Operations Overseas Logistics
F.O.O.L House
El Ray
Mexico
+52 555 419 419
Yours Sincerely
Ghotya Dosh
I'm not going to go along with calling this guy an award winning moron, because I don't believe the story. There's no way in hell a whole family would be this stupid. One guy maybe, but not a whole family. People this stupid simply can't get access to this kind of money unless they're royalty. I doubt the story is true.
We have Bush. I now wonder if this guy was trying to get the All Time IDIOT award for himself instead of Bush. Not an ounce of sympathy at all.
How come they don't just put him and his family out of their misery up there to prevent this happening again?
/mines the one with the bottle of "solvent" in the pocket
I sometimes spend time with IT primitives as we no longer have asylums where we can point and laugh at lunatics. (Why can't we?) Many of them have no idea what horrors await them once they make the effort to join us.
However, we Reg-ulars take for granted all the knowledge accumulated over the last 20 odd years online. What destroys all chance of mitigation for this imbecil is that at the "ripe old age" of 22, he managed to escape all contact with IT.
If it turns out he is Amish and just wanted to be like the rest of us, he will not only have my sympathy but I will feel a little guilty for mocking him. We should have been there for him.
Paris because the Amish remark just made me want to watch Kingpin again!
(I always pick Paris, but sometimes it's hard to find relevance.)
the greedier one is, the lazier one is, the more appealing this scam is. If someone even *has* 150K lying around to lose in the first place, and are of the sort who either keep their blinders on and are so insulated they've never heard of this scam, then they sure as h*ll didn't earn it by hard work. Work gets you "out and about" where you hear things. Too arrogant to pay attention to the real word around them, perhaps? Then they made their money by manipulating others. Or inherited it without any sweat of their own. And for those greedy SOBs who hoped to profit large by exploiting some unfortunate situation? No sympathies there either.
It's been said it's hard to scam the honest, and I believe that holds to this day. With so much more dishonesty about, scammers get easy pickings.
@ Peter Kay>
"However, there's a difference between a one off act of stupidity and repeated occurences over an extended period of time involving multiple people where not one of you questions what's going on. At some point these people must have been fully awake and sober. I mean, why?"
Never underestimate the power of denial. With every step, you dig yourself a deeper hole and the awful truth you have to face gets worse. By the end you'll do anything to keep your fantasy alive. C'mon. We've all fallen for that one, haven't we?
... but the 419'ers still have something to learn from our 'legitimate' bankers - sell dodgy bonds from mate to mate, all taking a cut on the way, as if its pass the parcel or just plain fleece the rich and gullible (HSBC, the charities) like Mr 'Madeoff' and $50 BILLION - and then when it all goes tits up we get to refinance them with our taxes!
Use of the phrase "God bless you" or equivalent always seems to be the main reason these dupes initially trust the scammers for some reason. It's as if the mentality is along the lines "They mentioned God, they must be Christians, Christians are all good people, I can trust them." Only the first clause of that statement can be shown to be indisputably true.
Hey! You're missing one number on that Mexico City phone number! (make it +52 55 5419 0419 ;)
As for how this guy got $150k to spend ... well it seems that he himself ran into debt levels that no sane man would ever go into. It also seems he ran his own family into debt as well.
This guy was really stupid to believe this story. Even if I had fallen at first, I would've backed off at the "$2500 fee" they asked at first ... maybe because that's over my monthly income, but also because I don't need to pay anything to get "inheritance" to begin with.
Sorry mates, but he WAS actively trying to commit fraud. He WAS trying to bribe toll officers. He effing well *deserves* what happened to him. He is not a victim, he is an incredibly stupid wannabe crook.
Still nothing compared to the naked short-selling scum, the subprime crooks and other pathologically greedy brainless taxmoney vampires. And at least this particular idiot won't be "bailed out" of responsibility with our money.
I used to get incredibly angry at the victims of these and other kind of scams where a tiny bit of due diligence or even common sense would have averted the expected outcome. What upset me was that while I took great care with my money and didn't even trust Government guaranteed banks, always splitting large sums I received amongst unrelated accounts, these simpletons enabled a thriving underworld of slimy con-men to flourish.
But putting all that aside, imagine being in this man's place. Imagine feeling the incredible sense of betrayal and violation. Imagine being the butt of jokes and being laughed at around the world. Imagine facing your friends and relatives - or just trying to live normally day to day. We all deny things to ourselves and sooner or later we all get caught by something large or small, however smart we think we are.
A bit of compassion is called for here.
Now that Jack Bauer is getting involved in African nations, maybe Season 8 could be where someone really dumb, aka Kim Bauer, gets scammed by a 419er and Jack takes revenge and actually gets some credit for it this time...
(You need a Jack Bauer icon by the way... I think the Paris Hilton one is way out of date...)
This guy is a Mexican mennonite who's family immigrated to Canada. They are not educated and have babies after babies after babies. Once the kids are old enough to help out in the fields picking cucumbers and whatever else they got growing, they hand the cash over to the parents. Education is not of importance to them. Then they sit on welfare sucking more out of the Canadian taxpayers and send the cash down to South America to relatives. They will name the kids the same names to run a scam on the government to get of more of the taxpayers hard earned money so they can continue collecting welfare while they are out of the country living it up in south america. This I have seen done for I lived in Canada in an area heavily populated by these people. Mind you not all of them are like that. Some actually separate away from the lifestyle they grew up in and do go to school and hold down jobs but that is just a very small percentage.
how in the heck can a family of uneducated people like these have that amount of money when there are people out there who work full time at decent paying jobs living paycheque to paycheque. These people have more luxuries than what a family with two incomes pull in at top wage. Don't let this guys tears fool you. These scammers living on the taxpayers dime just got scammed themselves. Serves him right to be so damned selfish
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