Eric Cordian wrote:
It's certainly unethical for Nigerians to try and make a living by bilking foreigners with elaborate schemes that promise vast riches in return for an advance fee.
Granted.
But Nigeria is a very poor country, with high unemployment, where people are forced by economic circumstances to do almost anything to try and feed their families. I see no reason to be proud of reverse-scamming a Nigerian out of $80 when it might be his entire family's food money for the month.
The 419 scam has been going on for the best part of half a century. The advent of the net and email has only allowed it to spread farther and wider, while law enforcement has been unable to stem it significantly. If reverse-scamming some Nigerian fraudster out of the month's food budget incents him to seek out legal means of income, that's one less 419er. If a few of his friends drop their fraud careers after seeing one of them get taken, that's more ex-419ers.
It seems to me the relationship between affluent Americans and poor Nigerians is an example of a dominant class/subordinate class structure, and in such a structure, the subordinate class has rights, and the dominant class has responsibilities.
Including the responsibility to tacitly underwrite a massive, national-scale fraud campaign? Somehow, I don't think so.
It is beneath the station of those those with the power to define, describe, and profile the world to pick the pocket of some poor black man in Africa, while encouraging him to pose for funny pictures that will be laughed at on some comfortably well off white person's web site.
But it's the proper station of that poor black African to attempt picking the pocket of any number of comfortably well-off white people? 419ers are criminals. They steal money by dint of deception. They break the social contract. I can't get too worked up about turning the tables on them. Think of it as evolution in action.
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