Arts Stupid American
“As the lust for large and easy profits is fanned into a hot flame, the mark puts all his scruples behind him. He closes out his bank account, liquidates his property, borrows from his friends, embezzles from his employer or his clients. In the mad frenzy of cheating someone else, he is unaware of the fact that he is the real victim, carefully selected and fatted for the kill. Thus arises the trite but none the less sage maxim: `You can’t cheat an honest man.’ ”
Greedy or just gullible? Cunning or a little bit too imbued with good, old-fashioned Christian values?
The verdict: just an avaricious dumbass.
Here’s the story of a mail-order psychologist falling prey to his own greed and lack of even basic common sense. Oh - and those Nigerian scam artists, too. The sad thing is: they’re not even that good. He’s just the perfect mark.
Moral: A grand don’t come for free.
Classic case. He goes to prison still believing the scam was real. He'll believe it to the day he dies. Thousands of people did the same thing back before computers with the Francis Drake inheritance.
It's easy to blame the victim, but it's a psychological trick that can't be resisted. Skeptics are often the easiest marks -- just like scientists and parapsychology.