Greg's Corner

Interview with a scam artist: What they think may surprise you

If you’ve ever been scammed out of money online or if you’re just curious to take a look inside the mind of a scam artist I recommend reading this post from Inforworld by Roger A. Grimes. In it Mr. Grimes was able to briefly interview someone who reportedly scams people online for a living.

One of things I took away from the interview is that even the scammers get scammed. It sounds like that the online classifieds scams are a pyramid scheme in itself since the low men on the totem pole are losing money to the higher-ups. Some may think that’s justice but that doesn’t bring the money back to the victims. One of the other things I found interesting is that at least this scammer seems to see his activities as almost like stealing bread for a starving family. He seems to have the attitude that Americans have all sorts of money lying around and can afford to be scammed even though that a lot of scamming victims have lost what eager life savings they may have had.

The good news is that the scammer says it’s getting harder and harder to scam people out of their money online. As the number of people who have been raised with the internet increases hopefully these scams will become a thing of the past.