Field Guide to Scam Artists- Part I The Big Cons

A field guide to scam artists:

I want to start by saying this is in no way racial. I’ve run into scam artists from many countries, men and women young and old. Some are looking for the big time score, but most are hoping to rely on someone’s generosity or loneliness to make a few bucks. A few aren’t scammers at all but trying to make ends meet and have stumbled on a way to make money on the net. Hey it’s more than a lot of dot coms did but more about them later.


The Big Cons:

This is the classic on line scam. They have millions and they need your help to get it and if you help them they will give you a big chunk of an astronomical amount of money. I think I personally have been offered amounts greater than the GDP of most of the countries these scams come from. Even after years of news stories these scams are still out there so there must still be gullible people out there. I get less of these now but I still bet once every two weeks I hear some variation. The amount of money varies I think the smallest amount I’ve seen is $9 million and the largest amount over $100 million. There are several variations on where the money came from. The ones I’ve commonly heard are:


Hi I’m a banker at some official sounding but fictitious bank and I deal with dormant accounts. I t recently came to my attention that we have (fill in ridiculously large sum of money here) on account that belonged to an American oil worker who was tragically killed with his entire family in a (choose 1 plane crash, helicopter crash, automobile accident, house fire) and that if something isn’t done very soon they are going to have to give the money to the government. But if someone was to pose as this person’s relative then they could collect the money. Sometimes it’s the same scam but a barrister or a solicitor instead of a banker, which is fun because they don’t usually know the difference.

The next major genre is that they are related to some figure that has been deposed and that they were able to get money out just before things really went bad, but now they are stuck and need my help. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to know that I’ve personally spoken to the wife of the former president of the Philippines (several of his wives in fact), the brother of the former leader of Liberia and assorted cousins, brothers in law and chauffeurs of many other world leaders. Sometimes I amaze myself with how many important people seek me out!

The last version of this is probably the least common. That’s the crooked bureaucrat. They work for some large government ministry and they have discovered some (fill in astronomical sum of money here) they didn’t spend but with their help they will get me qualified as a supplier and then I can invoice for a huge sum of money and they will see to it that I get paid.

All these cons work the same way. They want to get your confidence and then they need a few thousand dollars for this, a few thousand for that and that huge sum of money is getting closer but of course there is no money and the whole modis operendi is to get you to give them money now for the promise of a nonexistent fortune later. I’ve yet to see one of these schemes where what you were being drawn into wasn’t in someway illegal. So if you were entirely honest there is no way to could be drawn in. As WC Fields said “You can’t cheat an honest man.”