Stunned country bumpkin...

[MagicRat]

Okay, I really feel for this guy. The Internet is a bit of a Wild West for the naive.

But how could this guy get so far in debt without someone telling him that he was probably getting scammed?
This story is proof that the 419 fraud still works. It's also an indication that such decent, trusting folk such as the Mennonites should stay off the net until trained. (From Yahoo Canada News)

Ontario man bilked of $150,000 in email scam

Wed Jan 14, 10:16 PM

A southern Ontario man says he now owes his friends and family $150,000 after international email scam artists bilked him of the funds by convincing him he was about to inherit a fortune.

John Rempel, who is unemployed, lives with his Mennonite parents in a simple wartime home in Leamington, about 50 kilometres southeast of Windsor.

Rempel told CBC News the scheme started in 2007, when he opened an email and thought he was set for life.

The email told the 22-year-old a distant relative had died in a bomb attack in London, England, and left behind $12.8 million.

He said the email was from someone claiming to be an attorney named Matthew Spencer, who said he represented the relative and was looking for someone to claim the fortune.

Spencer was a world away, but convinced Rempel they shared a faith in God, he said.

"He always said, 'God bless you,'" Rempel said.

"Every Sunday he was in church. All that stuff made me believe it, right?"

So when Rempel was told he needed to pay fees for documents, he did.

"At first it was a little bit, some fees about $2,500, and I thought that was it," he said.

"After that … it never stopped. They were like, 'Just this bit yet and then it's going to happen.'"

When he was told he needed to fly to England to meet some men personally and pay more fees, he did.

"I met them behind the motel, I handed them over $10,000 in cash," he said. "I was happy. I was like, 'Oh wow, this is real, because I met them and everything.'"

When the emails asked for more money, he borrowed it from his parents, his family and his friends.

Then two weeks ago, Rempel waited at a New York airport for the men and his money to arrive, but they never came. He then contacted the police.

"This is a bunch of money," he said. "It's like a mortgage, a big house mortgage people work for 25 years."

Leamington police Const. Kevin O'Neil said there's not much investigators can do.

"There's no doubt that they're probably not even using proper names, so to try to track these people down would be almost impossible," O'Neil told CBC News.

So now Rempel finds himself having to pay everyone back.

"Got them broke, got myself broke, got my family broke, and I can't believe how those kind of people, how they can do that to people," he said.

In spite of everything, Rempel said his faith in God is strong and he still believes anything is possible — even a way out of this debt.

[fredjacksonsan]

Wow. I feel for the guy, but really..."I met them behind the hotel, and handed them $10,000 in cash..." At some point trust must turn to some sort of question.

[BP2K2Max]

i want to, but i just don't feel bad for that idiot or his stupid friends that loaned him all that money. no one bothered to ask him what the money was for? freakin' retards, all of them.

[jon@af]

Originally Posted by BP2K2Max

i want to, but i just don't feel bad for that idiot or his stupid friends that loaned him all that money. no one bothered to ask him what the money was for? freakin' retards, all of them.

I'm going to have to lean this way.

Seriously? NO ONE asked what was going on with this money or they all believed him/those people? No one thought "I didn't even know I had family in London"? No one he is related to has heard anything about email scams? He didn't think to see some proof of the matter?

I mean, I understand that hindsight is 20/20, but realistically, an intelligent human being would have considered a few things and been skeptical before blindly going "ok! Here's all my money! Now what?"

It reminds me of the episode of Futurama (or maybe it was one of their movies?) in which the sell the rights of the company by stupidly agreeing to sign documents they got in emails saying that they had won the spanish lottery.

Common sense is not so common.

[Gohan Ryu]

A secretary who recently retired from the company I work for told us that she was in contact with some African prince who needed help getting his money out of the country - we all knew that scam and told her what was happening. No matter how many people told her and no matter how many links exposing the scam we sent to her, she refused to believe us . At one point she was calling US idiots and saying she'd be rich and we were jealous. She was so turned on by the thought of getting all this money that she became delusional. She's not an idiot - of normal intelligence I'd say, but the greed just made her stupid. She caught on after she sent a payment to the scammers and they kept asking for more. By that point I was hoping they would take every penny she had.

[MagicRat]

Originally Posted by Gohan Ryu

A secretary who recently retired from the company I work for told us that she was in contact with some African prince who needed help getting his money out of the country - we all knew that scam and told her what was happening. No matter how many people told her and no matter how many links exposing the scam we sent to her, she refused to believe us . At one point she was calling US idiots and saying she'd be rich and we were jealous. She was so turned on by the thought of getting all this money that she became delusional. She's not an idiot - of normal intelligence I'd say, but the greed just made her stupid. She caught on after she sent a payment to the scammers and they kept asking for more. By that point I was hoping they would take every penny she had.

Before the modern internet existed, I used to get fax messages coming from Nigerian goverment ministers, princes etc. with the same deal. I knew it was a scam even them.
But you are right; some people delude themselves.
3 years ago, a buddy of mine, (who should have known better) was selling his tow truck for $25K throught the local Auto Trader (and their site). He got the overseas offer/scam.... (you know the deal, I'll send you a check for $30k, you send me one for $5k...)
T argued with him for an hour on how it was a well-known scam... that he should do some research and look it up... that even the RCMP warn about this scam on their website etc.
He didn't believe me either.
However, he did have the good sense to post-date his cheque 10 days to give the fake cheque time to bounce..... so he did not lose any money.

[ericn1300]

The scammers prey on peoples greed. The Nigerians just aren't up to American (home of the Ponzi scam) standards yet. Madoff's and the Nigerian schemes wouldn't have worked except that greed clouds rational thought.

[2.2 Straight six]

A while back my grandma got a letter in the mail, from some lawyers office saying she was due some inheritance (it didn't say how much) and they'd been trying to track down those who were entitled to it for something like 15 years. For a while she was in correspondance with them, and we all thought it was a scam. Anyway, long story short, about a month ago she recieved ~$100,000. Sure surprised us! Apparently some distant relative of hers had owned a castle in Scotland and had died leaving no children, so it'd taken years to track down who was due the inhertance. Crazy!

[MagicRat]

Originally Posted by 2.2 Straight six

A while back my grandma got a letter in the mail, from some lawyers office saying she was due some inheritance (it didn't say how much) and they'd been trying to track down those who were entitled to it for something like 15 years. For a while she was in correspondance with them, and we all thought it was a scam. Anyway, long story short, about a month ago she recieved ~$100,000. Sure surprised us! Apparently some distant relative of hers had owned a castle in Scotland and had died leaving no children, so it'd taken years to track down who was due the inhertance. Crazy!

A lawyer in Britain=worth listening to

A lawyer in Nigeria=always a scam

[drunken monkey]

The inheritance thing in the UK is slightly different.
In the UK, there is a quite a lot of unclaimed inheritence.
It is a growing business for solicitors and lawyers to aggressively search for unclaimed heirs to unclaimed inheritence and then simply work in acting as the legal team for the heir.