The Sad Truth About Scams and Fraud Schemes
The genesis of this site arose when Sandy Hutchens read the sad story of a registered nurse, who teaches CPR and is also a reverend who marries couples. She also a hearing-impaired husband with whom she communicates using sign language. Street wise, learned, full of insight, and smart – it may seem incredible to believe that such a brilliant woman would send half a million dollars to a bunch of con artists running what has to be one of the best-known internet scams in the world?
They call it the Nigerian scam or the 419 fraud. Most people that use email have come into contact with this scam. The e-mail pitch goes as follows: a distant relative or government official in a war-torn country far away needs to move funds, say $10 or $25 million, and if you could just help them out for a little while, you can keep 10 percent for your efforts.
You only have to send some money to pay for fees and all that cash will then land in your checking account, to your delight. By the way, they say, please send the funds though untraceable wire services. By now, very few people will fall for this pitch, and the scam has become famous. But it persists, and from the sheer force of numbers it works from time to time.
For the woman whose story I read it started with an e-mail. It promised $20 million and in this case, the money was supposedly left behind by her grandfather (somehow they had his real name!), who had lost contact with the family over the decades. That was what gave the email credibility for her. Although the nurse had no idea how the sender knew grandfather’s name and her relation to him, she became very curious.
It started with just $100. The scam artists ran this decent woman through the whole con. They even said that President George W. Bush and FBI Director “Robert Muller” were involved with the arrangements and required her assistance. They sent official-looking documents and certificates from the Bank of Nigeria and even from the United Nations. Her payment was “guaranteed.”
Out of nowhere the amount they said she would get jumped up to $26.6 million – if she would just send $8,300. Our nurse sent the money.
Further promises of multi-millions ensued, each one, of course, dependent on her sending yet more money. Most of the emails were filled with misspellings and bad grammar.
When our nurse started to doubt the scam, she got letters from the President of Nigeria, FBI Director Mueller, and President Bush. It turns out that terrorists would get the money if she refused her help, Bush’s letter said. Sadly, our nurse and reverend continued to send funds. Obviously, all the letters were a fraid.
She cleaned out her husband’s retirement account, mortgaged their house and took a lien out on the family car.
Unbelievably, this went on for over two years, with her sending tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted. Why? It was that thread of credibility. Somehow her grandfather’s name made her compliant.
She kept sending money because the scammers went on telling her that the next payment would be the last one, that the big money was coming in. Now she was seriously hooked and intent on getting paid. She had lost so much and didn’t want to admit to herself that she was on train going nowhere.
An undercover agent who worked on the case said greed helped blind her to the reality of the situation, which he called the most egregious example of the Nigerian scam he’s ever come across. He also said he has seen people become obsessed with the scam before. They are so desperate to recoup their losses, that they descend into a vicious cycle of sending money in hopes the false promises will somehow turn out to be real.
Now, our nurse has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall prey to this scam. She hopes her story will serve as a cautionary tale to others so that they will avoid going down the dark tunnel of obsession that ended up costing her so dearly.
Our nurse said it would take years to dig out of the debt she ran up in pursuit of the non-existent pot of Nigerian gold.
There is something deeply sad about this true story for Sandy Hutchens. Primarily the horrible effect that this had on our nurse. It is also deeply saddening, in my opinion, that people could stoop so low as to take advantage of someone in such a way as to harm their whole family. Perhaps it helped them to do this because they didn’t actually know her. Did that help? I don’t know but it is sad nonetheless.