Are Scammers As Dumb as They Seem?

Something that always amazes me is how dumb scammers appear to be. They hardly even try to correct the grammar in their emails. They don't seem to care a lick about spelling or formatting. Their sentences often do not even make any sense. Their made-up names often are gender confused or they'll use a typical last name as their first name - when clearly it is a last name. They use the same fake name and email addresses for long periods of time. They seem to use the same templated content over and over and over and over again. They make up stories that often are too unbelievable, and they use dollar amounts for "inheritances" or prize money that are so outlandish, it seems too fantastical.

And I think to myself - how can scammers be so stupid?

And then I thought - are scammers really as stupid as they seem to be?

They seem to be making millions and millions of dollars from unsuspecting victims and they don't even have to clean their act up. They can put in a minimum of effort, not even make sense, have all their formatting off, and their story nonsensical - and still they are making millions and millions of dollars. They can send the exact same "story" out to hundreds of thousands of people and use this same story over a long period of time - years in many cases, and still they make millions and millions of dollars. They evade the authorities and get people from all over the world to wire them money and people keep doing this even though wire transfer is the one way their money will disappear and be untraceable once the scammer has picked it up from Western Union or Money Gram or some other wire transfer service.

So the really sad thing about this is the fact that scammers are as successful as they are doing the crappiest of jobs that they are.

I really do not think victims are dumb. I think scammers exploit some very nuanced weaknesses in people - that they are in a fast-paced society and don't take the time to read everything before acting. They don't take the time to check things out from independent sources online (more people are now, but clearly not enough). People are moving fast and not checking the details.

The other weakness scammers exploit is the tendency people have to trust what is in front of them. If their bank has sent them an email saying their account has been temporarily suspended for suspicious activity and click here to verify your identity - way too many people just naturally believe that email is really from their bank and they need to click on that link and verify their identity. It never occurs to them that the email is all made up to look like their bank but a scammer is behind it all. People just wanna believe.

So scammers have the luxury, for now, of not even having to make sense or present an email with correct sentence structure, spelling, or formatting. Their story doesn't have to make sense. They can throw any huge number out there of how much you've won or inherited from some Nigerian prince. They can say anything they want and put an absolute minimum amount of effort into it, and they will still make a bundle of money from their victims. That is why there are so many scammers. It's a dream job.

When are you - people - going to get off this bandwagon and not make it so easy for a scammer to take your money or identity or passwords online? What will it take to move the awareness of enough people so that it actually becomes difficult for scammers?

Why am I going on a rant like this on a Saturday morning? Because I am going to post an email below that I received and the scammer was SO dumb that he pasted the entire message of his scam all in the Subject line and left the content area blank. Scammers have these templates and software that push out their spam email and this scammer couldn't even paste his spam content into the correct field of his spam software. And yet... I wonder how much money he'll successfull make on even this email....

Reply-To: [mrabrahammaluba@yahoo.co.jp]
From: "Abraham Maluba"[mrabrahammaluba@yahoo.co.jp]

To: mrabrahammaluba@yahoo.co.jp

Subject: IAm a ex-banker from Benin Republic. A family friend Mrs. Linda Calsabay who happens to be the wife of a late banker and my former boss intimated me on her intention to invest the sum of USD12.6M in a foreign country, being money left for her family by her late husband who died recently. Iam soliciting on her behalf for you to help her invest and manage the money properly in your country, her areas of investment interest includes but not limited to real estate and hotel.Get back to me for more info please.