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February 23, 2012 at 4:42 pm 
Kylie Sturgess Okay, the title is clearly hyperbole. But I laughed anyway:
Sarah Jane Cochrane-Ramsey, 23, was employed by the Nigerians as an “agent” in March 2010 but was unaware they were scam artists, the Brisbane District Court heard today.
Her job was to provide an Australian bank account through which they could funnel any payments they received through their dodgy account on a popular car sales website.
Cochrane-Ramsey was to keep eight per cent of all money paid into her account and forward the rest to the Nigerian scammers.
However, the court heard she kept the two payments she received – totalling $33,350 – and spent most of it on herself.
Rest of the story in The Australian.
For more reading on how absurd these scammers can be, check out Urgent and Confidential – Dean Cameron’s Nigerian Spam Scam Scam site (the stage show is running again this year on the east coast of USA) and the dangers of such “419″ scammers via ScamWatch.
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“but was unaware they were scam artists”
So basically she stole from people who she thought were honest businessmen (who just turned out to be thieves as well)?
I don’t get the “respect” part of the topic.
It’s clearly a sarcastic comment. These are reprehensible people, despite “scammers being scammed”. Hence the links at the end of my article, as it’s one of the few laughs I’ve ever got out of a system that is really devoted to targeting trusting people – and even can result in kidnapping and murder.
Ah, she was always going to get caught. At least she was the con-artist, rather than the money-laundering dupe.
Yes, my sarcastic title implying that she’s some kind of bad-ass doesn’t negate the fact that they are all criminals. But I wouldn’t have minded seeing the trial happen.
The irony would be beautiful if it weren’t for the fact that the $30,000 was money scammed from other people. On the other hand, anyone dumb enough to fall for scams almost deserve to be relieved of their money.
It can happen to some really trusting people too – I always worried about the elderly or naive thinking that there was some truth to them.
Edit: Someone has written claiming that my ‘worry’ is erroneous (I think I’m right to worry and have concerns, but it’s hardly as if I’m discriminating against them!) – “Older people often fall for Internet scams and then become too embarrassed to report the fraud, a study has found.
The over-55 age group accounts for 40 per cent of victims even though their age group is less likely to use the Internet, a study by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) has found.
The study surveyed 202 Victorians who had sent money to Nigeria to determine why they had responded to unsolicited contact and the impact of the fraud on their lives.”
I do acknowledge the following articles:
http://news.discovery.com/human/are-the-elderly-more-easily-scammed.html – Ben Radford!
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/your-money/why-even-smart-people-fall-scams
BTW, it does help if you back up your case with links.
That’s entirely true: The elderly (and religious) more often fall for scams than other groups. The overly trusting or greed are the behavior constellations targeted.
You may enjoy scambaiting websites like http://419eater.com/html/letters.htm or http://www.thescambaiter.com/
I’m fine if people can back up those statements with sources, as I did. I certainly found Ben Radford’s article interesting in that regard – and certainly, everyone can fall for scams and frauds.
It appears that a commentator called Clive Bond has taken to posting abusive messages to me – they are not welcome here.
Commenting on FreeThought blogs is NOT a right. It is a privilege. Don’t abuse it.
And I wish I was kidding. But in my emails just then?
“Greetings to you and your family. I am ****** , auditing and accounting manager, Bankof Africa Ouagadougou Burkina Faso .
I need your assistance in transferring the sum of ($5.3M) Five million , Three hundred thousand united dollars into your account within 8 to 10 banking days…. ”
Never-ending. I’ll hit delete. As always.
I kept a couple thousand from one of these people. They’re not really scam artists. They’re money launderers.
Scam artists ask YOU for money, they don’t let you HAVE SOME!
Money launderers are laundering so much money that a couple thousand missing is nothing.
But in my case the person just went unresponsive, so I just kept the last payment.
That woman, however, was NOT being scammed. She agreed to something and then scammed the other person but not following through with her agreement. When she saw all that money her broke ass couldn’t believe itself so she just HAD to keep it.