Man Loses Millions In Bizarre Virus-Protection Scam 366
Orome1 writes "A US court has heard that a couple conned at least $6 million from the great-grandson of an oil industry tycoon after he brought his virus-infected computer in for repair. The couple are said to have tricked the composer into believing that, while investigating the virus, they had found evidence that his life was in danger – concocting a story that the virus had been tracked to a hard drive in Honduras, and that evidence had been found that the composer's life was in danger." The victim here, Roger Davidson, may have lost as much as $20 million, after being convinced that he was in danger from a grand conspiracy. Vickram Bedi and girlfriend Helga Invarsdottir convinced Davidson to pay $160,000 monthly, and possibly much more, for their help.
he shouldn't complain (Score:5, Funny)
Just because... (Score:2)
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*ahem*
This is why people should fix their own computers (Score:2)
Re:This is why people should fix their own compute (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is why people should fix their own compute (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you don't make the effort to become an _informed consumer_, which while considerable is less than that required to do the jobs you list, you
won't be able to distinguish good techs from bad.
BTW:
In terms of money saved, learn to fix the car first. It pays off hugely over a lifetime, even if you take a community college course to get started.
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He'd rather dick around with his guitar and TV than become informed about a two ton device that can kill others and that is one of the most likely instruments in a premature death of his children. His priorities are clear.
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He'd rather a professional deal with his dangerous device than make an expensive or fatal mistake fooling around with it on his own. I'd say his priories are in order. Now, go fix that skin rash with a google search and some caustic herbal concoction.
Re:This is why people should fix their own compute (Score:4, Insightful)
Acceptable if this had been a reason cited for his reluctance to perform his own maintenance and repairs. He talked of a lack of available time. Time that, by his own admission, he directs towards dicking with his guitar and tv.
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That's absurd, there's a difference between "I need to defrag your monitor, only costs 100$!" and "Give me 160k$ per month so I can stop bolivian kidnappers".
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Re:This is why people should fix their own compute (Score:5, Funny)
Well, yeah, but a good mechanic will do it properly. That's why you pay extra. Personally I'm not very good with cars and I don't have time to change the headlight fluid every six months, but I am concerned about driving at night when the headlights aren't ionized properly.
You should see my mechanic; he's not the cheapest but he'll fix problems with your car you didn't even know you had, and that other guys aren't sharp enough to notice.
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Just, FYI, every car has headlight fluid, and you need to change it every time you change the filament. Even the new-fangled "filament-free" lights need their fluid changed, indeed the proper mixture is even more important for those lamps.
Not creative enough. (Score:4, Informative)
Bet these chumps would fall for that too.
Re:Not creative enough. (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't that scam called Scientology? (Score:3, Insightful)
We've been contacted by an alien named Lurg. He comes from the planet Xulton in the in the Doovi nebula. Lurg informed us, that unless you pay him... errr.. I mean us... $160,000 a month, he will steal your child and make him a slave in the Galvanium mines of Dooviburg. You may be tempted to contact the United States authorities about this, however, any contact with them will result in the immediate death of your son.
That's not creative at all. You just ripped off L. Ron HubbleBubble and changed the names
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There's a place in the world for naive people (Score:2)
A counterpoint to the obvious: there's a place in the world for generous, naive people. They are GOOD people, generally.
It's a goddamned shame that scam artists take advantage of them.
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You just gave me a wonderful mental image of Homer Simpson tapping his fingers together, Burns-style, and gloating. "Yes, yes," he murmurs through an evil grin. "I will control Springfield by buying up all the Twinkies in the Quickie-Mart."
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comprehension fail.
You need to get your fucking English checked, friend.
Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's coming to get me (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, Mr. Davidson, they are out to get you. You just misunderstood who they are.
Naivete and paranoia are a dangerous combination.
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Are you by any chance Todd Davis or Robert Maynard, Jr.?
Wish it was just as simple as stupid.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wish it was just as simple as stupid.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wish it was just as simple as stupid.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can be conned. Most people can be conned under the right circumstances. A guy like Bernie Madoff could probably con the shit out of me, if I had the money to be worth conning. It's not a question of invulnerability. It's a question of standards. Nigerian princes just don't cut it.
Re:Wish it was just as simple as stupid.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Usually all it takes to con someone is to tell them you love them...
Re:Wish it was just as simple as stupid.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you ever seen what happens to people who get age-onset dementia? The changes in behaviour are often very significant.
Might make sense if you're not really using that particular half of your brain in the first place, but that'll be a rare case.
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Have you ever seen what happens to people who get age-onset dementia?
Yes. And lobotomies. I certainly agree that a person with advanced dementia shouldn't be managing their financial assets. I'm not familiar with the facts there; I may have been too glib.
That being said, I think a lot of other facilities would go first, before the Nigerian prince thing seems plausible. I suppose my prejudice is that if someone were seemingly capable of living outside of a nursing home, then they would at least maintain a facility for, if not making particularly sound financial decisions, at
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As someone with a family member with a form of dementia, I can tell you that yes, you are wrong.
This family member has developed paranoia and a number of delusions, causing her to grossly mismanage her sizable savings. However, she is still performing the ordinary activities that retired people do.
Have you ever known someone with schizophrenia? They can simultaneously believe that George Bush calls them on their cell phone every evening while holding a job and living a life that seems normal on the surface.
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Okay. I am sufficiently chastised.
Can you con an honest man? (Score:5, Informative)
The New York Times has a more in-depth article [nytimes.com] on this case, and it seems strange indeed.
There's an old saying: "You can't con an honest man." Most cons work because they prey on the victim's own greed or baser emotions. I wonder how much of this was going on in this case?
The Times article contains a few choice tidbits. Apparently, once he got into cahoots with the scammers, Mr. Davidson got involved with some plot of theirs to sue Wachovia Bank for mismanaging Davidson's trust fund, among other things. That sounds suspiciously like the classic con, where you give the con man some of your money in return for the promise that he'll get you lots more money later.
If nothing else, Davidson does sound a little credulous, and possibly mentally ill. The scammers told him his life was supposedly in danger from a group of Polish priests with ties to Opus Dei, whom the scammers told him had a plan to overthrow the United States government. How plausible is that? But then, if you were already rabidly anti-Catholic, it might sound very plausible. Most of us probably wouldn't believe there was an international conspiracy on our lives in the first place, no matter how rich we were; but if you were mentally unstable with delusions of grandeur, you might.
The final paragraph of the NYT article says Davidson's outgoing voicemail message says, “If you leave an ad or any other such message, your telephone wire will be fried automatically.” Who would claim such a thing? You might as well say you're going to report them to the Men in Black.
It seems to me that if Davidson was thinking clearly, none of this would have played out the way it did -- but I guess we knew that already.
That's not really true (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a lot of truth to it in terms of certain kind of scams. When you are talking immoral scams yes it is usually true. Things like the Nigerian "Help me steal millions of dollars from my country," things. Well you can't scam someone honest with that because it is a dishonest proposition. Even if you were 100% for real an honest person wouldn't do it because it is wrong.
However there are other scams that work perfectly well on honest people. Ones that play on fear are a good example. You convince someone is in danger and they have to do X to not be. No dishonesty there, they just don't want to be hurt. That is perfectly understandable. I mean if you were able to honestly convince me that my life was in danger and the only way out way to pay, well I'd do it. Now of course I'd be rather hard to convince of that fact, I have a good deal of faith in our police forces and my marksmanship, not to mention a good understanding of just how not worth it it would be to try and kill me. However supposing you found a perfectly believable set of evidence that could well and truly convince me then sure, because I'd think it was real and not want to die.
This leads to the second part that it is possible to scam people who are not as bright and who are credulous and/or gullible. While it may be trendy for geeks to hate on people who are less intelligent as though it was their fault, simple fact of the matter is that as with so much else in humans, intelligence is genetically determined and falls on a bell curve. Just as there are people who smarter than most, there are those who are not. Some people just cannot process data as well as others, cannot reason as well as others, and thus cannot identify and deal with scams as well as others.
So while I find this scam laughably stupid, well I'm a computer support and security professional. I know how this shit works, and the holes are easy to spot. For someone who doesn't know as much, and perhaps is slightly below average intelligence, perhaps it seemed far more plausible.
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GeekSquad (Score:2)
stupid people... (Score:2)
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I'm sure that's what the _filthy_ rich tell themselves from time to time :).
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html [ucsc.edu]
As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.7%.
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I'm sure that's what the _filthy_ rich tell themselves from time to time :).
Ah, I think they need to add a few steps:
terra' (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've seen a similar scheme (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I've seen a similar scheme (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, this is true. Something similar happened to me. A friend played a joke. I'm not famous by any stretch, but I'm a published writer and my work has appeared all over the place, including my local newspaper. So a friend decided (for whatever reason) to play this prank on me. He emailed me acting like he was somebody who had read something I'd written in the paper. At first it was just a regular "reader letter" type thing, but over the course of a few more emails he continued to escalate it onto some really weird and creepy stalker type thing. He'd say, email is so impersonal, how would you like to meet up to discuss this further? (No thanks.) Oh come on, we can meet at [a certain bar I go to regularly]. (Really, I'm not interested.) No? How about [this coffee shop right down the street from my house]? And the whole thing culminated in him sending me an email saying "I know you'll love this," along with a bunch of JPEGs of bloody dead bodies and people with injuries. Ha ha ha.
Now, I was maybe 70 percent sure that this was some kind of prank. I mean, who would care enough to really wish harm on me? But that 30 percent is a killer. It eats at you. There are some straaaaaannnge people out there -- just look around Slashdot. And in this day and age, it really is pretty hard to imagine that a stranger could not be able to narrow down my place of residence if they really felt like they wanted to. I have to admit that the whole thing made me pretty uncomfortable -- enough to take it seriously.
Anyway, my friend denied that he had anything to do with it, denied it and denied it again. So after the third denial I just said, "OK, well you've seen the emails. You should come down to the police station with me when I file the report." That's when he realized I was really serious, and he owned up -- and we all laughed at what a funny, funny, funny joke that was.
A Tragic Comedy (Score:2)
One case of a rich individual being cheated by the relatively poor, as opposed to the situation our economy is founded on, the many poor being cheated by the rich.
What a shame.
And people say rich people deserve there money... (Score:2, Insightful)
The guys a fool living of his great-grand fathers success. It sounds in some ways like the scamers did more work for the money than he did. (Not that I think we should be rewarding them for being a-grade assholes)
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean seriously. Do people really fall for these scams?
"A fool and his money are soon parted" -- Thomas Tusser.
It's as true today as when he said it back in the 1500s.
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Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
You gotta be kidding me.
We now decide on whether or not someone gets to keep their money on the basis of how hard he / she worked to earn it?? What subcommittee, from the dark nether regions of Cthulu's domain, decided this stellar policy in my absence?
The man got swindled. Whether or not the man has $2 or $2 million in his checking account, he deserves our sympathy. That he is an heir, and thus "didn't earn the money," is a poor excuse for some highly despicable behavior.
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:4, Informative)
Incidentally, TFA makes a little fun about Opus Dei, featured in the Da Vinci Code being one of the supposed villains that are after him. Okay, that's a bit of a red flag, but Opus Dei do actually exist and are a sort of sub-cult within Catholicism. They've got their claws into various influential people and actually score moderately well on the Sinister Scale. Lower than Wahabism, bobbing along under Scientology, but certainly high above your run of the mill nutters.
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And don't most USians live in fear of the muslim terrorists and Obama's "Death Panels"?
You believe far too much of what you see on TV. Only about 15% of us are crazy, just like any other country. The rest are pretty normal.
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WTF are you??
Who are you to tell me what I should or should not be able to do with my possessions...weather they be physical assets or money??
Part of possess
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Other than a very high level overview of scamming techniques, what are you going to teach people in schools that will be relevant for the next 60+ years of their life? Scammers have shown time and again that, the second their targets become aware of the scam, they will switch tactics and it's back to square one. When I was at school the internet was practically unheard of, and I'm in my thirties - a lot of the people who get scammed are much older (in fact the elderly are the prime target for scammers), whe
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Being scammed is not a great comparison to being burgled. When you're scammed you have to make an actively stupid decision to take part in the scam.
When you're burgled, you don't get a direct choice. You can however do a few things to make your house less attractive to burglars. You most definitely should if you have already been subject to a burglary, just as you should learn a bit more about common scams if you have generally poor common sense (as I do, and I still manage not to give my bank account detai
Just the gullible ones. (Score:2)
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Interesting)
More and more I feel that people who are that paranoid and quick to believe conspiracies have an extrem form of narcism. They actually believe that the are important enough to worth that much effort. They think the world is out to get them in fact most the world doesn't even know they are here.
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Funny)
More and more I feel that people who are that paranoid and quick to believe conspiracies have an extreme form of narcissism. They actually believe that the are important enough to worth that much effort. They think the world is out to get them in fact most the world doesn't even know they are here.
Unlike everyone here who has all there important documents^Hporn encrypted and hidden with TrueCrypt on six hard drives stuffed in the laundry room and the USB stick stuffed in their mom's purse while tunneling into Slashdot with two proxies on different continents?
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Funny)
Continents? Continents?!?
Piffle!
I'm riding 3 satellites and a worm-hole, baby!
Best,
Bruce Schneier
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Unlike everyone here who has all there important documents^Hporn encrypted
"important documentporn"? I think you meant ^W or ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H.
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Funny)
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terminals in the niiiiiiight exchanging asciii
whoops, we've dropped a byyyyte please hit the break key
dooobeee doobeedooooooooo
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Funny)
Unlike everyone here who has all there important documents^Hporn encrypted
"important documentporn"? I think you meant ^W or ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H.
No, he got it right.
The word "documentporn" is german for porn kept at the office mixed into a stack of documents that no one would ever look at otherwise.
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Funny)
Brilliant. I literally can't tell whether you're joking or not.
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
if you have to encrypt your porn then your are a kid or it is some sick shit of kids
Or you are just from a sick country. In Australia, pics of small-breasted women of any age are considered child porn... even if they're clearly like 35 or something.
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So no more pictures of my wife I guess ....
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Man:
Is your uh, is your wife interested in... photography, ay? 'Photographs, ay', he asked him knowlingly?
Squire:
Photography?
Man:
Snap snap, grin grin, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more?
Squire:
Holiday snaps, eh?
Man:
They could be, they could be taken on holiday.
Candid, you know, CANDID photography?
Squire:
No, no I'm afraid we don't have a camera.
Man:
Oh.
(leeringly)
Still, mooooooh, ay? Mwoohohohohoo, ay? Hohohohohoho, ay?
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Funny)
In Australia, pics of small-breasted women of any age are considered child porn...
Hmmm... weaponized small breasts. (looks down shirt) Screw this, I'm moving to Australia, and if anyone says my boobs are small, I can have them arrested for viewing child porn.
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
More and more I feel that people who are that paranoid and quick to believe conspiracies have an extrem form of narcism. They actually believe that the are important enough to worth that much effort. They think the world is out to get them in fact most the world doesn't even know they are here.
If he has $6 to $20 million dollars to be conned out of, you don't have to be narcissistic to think you are a target, you are the top of the top 1%. Sometimes, they really are out to get you.
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True, but in the case the only ones out to get him, well, got him. Maybe that means he should have been more paranoid...
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I'm paranoid but am I paranoid enough?
Even paranoids have enemies.
Henry Kissinger
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I can help you discover the answer to that question. My fees are $160,000 a month.
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Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Interesting)
More and more I feel that people who are that paranoid and quick to believe conspiracies have an extrem form of narcism. They actually believe that the are important enough to worth that much effort. They think the world is out to get them in fact most the world doesn't even know they are here.
There is one glaring problem with that viewpoint. It may have been true back when tracking/spying on a particular target would have required special effort and dedication of manpower. It is no longer true now that surveillance, monitoring, and database technology has advanced to the point where monitoring everyone all of the time is becoming increasingly feasible and cost-effective.
For one narrow example, consider police. It used to be that if they wanted to track someone's whereabouts, they had to assign police officers to stake out a suspect and follow him/her around. That's expensive. There are only so many police officers. Dedicating a number of them to constantly track a particular individual had to be justified. That individual had to be exceptional and extraordinary to justify this cost, because that manpower could be put to much better use otherwise. Now it's both cost-effective and (recently) legally justifiable to simply install GPS tracking devices on citizens' vehicles. Now a computer can automatically perform that tracking and all it costs is a piece of mass-produced electronics that only becomes cheaper over time.
Far from narcissists, I am coming to believe that those you call "paranoid" are realists. In a previous era they may have been quaint and paranoid but these days they're among the few willing to face the implications of a hard truth.
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Funny)
Day 104: Things have been getting weird ever since I joined his raiding party. He trusts me. They all trust me. Well, except Cranston the Night Elf. I can tell he suspects something.
I'm starting to forget who I am. I've been getting deeper into cheetos. I miss my wife. I can't believe how long I've spent playing someone else.
Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
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Then that means they got him didn't they? After all, how many computer repair geeks would really concoct such a outlandish scheme to swindle him of that much money?
At most they'd overcharge him a few thousands for a new PC with the works, copying data over, and they'd probably get away with that.
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Re:Now That's Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
The scammers had access to his hard drive. They probably just looked at his browsing history to find out which conspiracy theory websites he frequented and made up something that matched up with whatever strange beliefs this guy may have already had. That's what I would do if I wanted to scam someone.
Stupid Tax v. Scam (Score:4, Interesting)
> More of a stupid tax than a scam, really.
Which is, in and of itself, an interesting dichotomy. To what extent should the law protect those who don't protect themselves? That's an issue comes up in false advertising cases, in tort cases, in welfare issues, in tax policy, and generally throughout society, as soon as you decide there will be rule of law. Do we defend someone against malicious speech? Against the elements? Do we care if they could have diffused a situation with a kind word and instead chose to be belligerent and got punched in the nose? Do we feel differently if the nose hit belongs to a woman or a man or a child or a dog? A multimillionaire should be able to protect himself, but then, if it's inherited, he may have no nose for it. Or if he's only used to dealing with reputable companies, he may be hoodwinked.
Re:Stupid Tax v. Scam (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. This is racketeering plain and simple. Possibly well targeted racketeering, but still the same. Haven't you ever believed something wasn't true? Should people be allowed to maliciously target others with stories defined by false pretenses?
Using someone's fear of further harm to extort money is not all that different than the mob coming in and telling you pay up or else. Throw these crooks in jail.
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Check your dictionary. A racket is nothing more than an illegal business. Racketeering is therefore exactly what they just did.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
Robin Hood gave his stolen money to the poor. I don't think these guys will be doing that. They would steal from the poor as well if it seemed profitable. Scammers are the lowest form of humanity.
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Mod parent up... although most of the reports on this story are copy/paste, I couldn't find a single one that actually stated where the money went. I would think that if they donated it to charity, that would be something to note in such a story. (not excluding the possibility, but there's no evidence that this is what happened as far as I can see).
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stealing from the poor is profitable. State lotteries, tobacco companies, and televangelists do it all the time.
Re:And... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except none of those examples you gave is an example of "stealing from the poor." Those examples are people willingly giving money to those entities. No one is putting a gun to people's heads and telling them to buy lottery tickets, smoke tobacco, or give money to televangelists.
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Robin Hood was running a guerrilla campaign against the nobility in the area. Of course he gave money to the poor. They would have ratted him out otherwise.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with being a trust fund baby. We all wanna be one, don't be jealous. What would you expect, you'd turn 18 and give it all away?
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There's nothing wrong with being a trust fund baby. We all wanna be one, don't be jealous.
But there is a hell of a lot wrong with a trust fund baby that's also a dumbass.
It goes completely against the american ethic we all learned in civics class of rewarding excellence.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is no 'Robin Hood' scenario, it's straight up theft & fraud. They should go to jail.
Someone foolish enough to buy this sort of nonsense will lose all their money soon enough anyway. I'd rather that cash go to the engineers and line workers who produce fancy cars in Italy than a couple of con artists.
I'm not sure where you have to hang out, and for how long, before you get confused about fraud, theft, lies and deceit, and why we shouldn't encourage this sort of thing.
Re:And... (Score:4, Funny)
Ah! Artists are never really understood by the masses.
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I know you're probably joking but con artists are not really "artists" in the sense that it generally takes true skill and cunning to successfully pull of a con. I think the biggest part is having the basic lack of respect and not caring about what is legal. Caring about whether or not you get caught probably doesn't factor into the decision making process. I think many very law-abiding Slashdotters and the general public can with very little effort pull of a con job. Its just 1) they respect others 2) resp
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Don't confuse running a scam for personal enrichment with the bravery and virtue of a true revolutionary expropriation.
Action with no philosophical backing is pretty empty, isn't it?
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This is the dumbest post I've ever seen.
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How the hell did your post get a score 5 insightful. What is wrong with some people these days? Bitter people filled with jealousy.
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Why is parent +5 insightful? Being jealous of people with lots of money is not reason to mod this crap up.
Look at it this way: These people took advantage of someone who had, obviously, some form of mental illness. Add to that he's technologically illiterate, and things don't look so good.
Here's what the parent should have said:
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I believe we shouldn't punish a person for being born poor. No one has a choice about who their parents would be.
But by that same token we shouldn't punish someone for being born rich either.
The hatred of the rich on ./ is amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
There is this attitude from many, such as you, that just because someone has money they are a bad person. As such they deserve to have bad things happen to them. What a horrible, shallow, short-sighted view. This is particularly true when you are talking someone like a trust-fund kid. At least in the case of someone who started normal and became rich I suppose you could believe they were underhanded and stole money from others if you are a hard core Marxist and have zero understanding of real economies. However someone born in to it? How is that their fault in any way, shape or form? While I certainly don't pity them for begin born in to privilege, I don't hate them for winning the genetic lottery. Hell, all of us who are fortunate enough to live in developed countries and have Internet access won the genetic lottery globally speaking.
So seriously, get some fucking perspective and get some fucking humanity. I get tired of seeing rich-hatred on this site, it is as stupid as any other kind of blind, over-generalized, hate.
And before you point fingers no, I'm not rich. I work for my reasonably modest living. I just happen to understand that I am lucky even in what I have, on a global scale, and I've met people who make a good deal more and less than I do and found those that are kind and caring and cruel and callous in both groups. Money does not define a person.
Re:The hatred of the rich on ./ is amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
What's particularly galling about that attitude is, by any objective measure, nearly everyone who frequents /. is "rich". So the idiots on here who proclaim we should "eat the rich" are targeting themselves for extinction.
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I was out that long? Seems like it happened just last week... How time flies