Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Making Light talks about types of fraud. My favorite is the meta-419 scam: an internet fraud by someone from Nigeria who tries to get you to send them cash as part of the process of tapping a fictional funds to recompense victims of Nigerian "419" internet frauds...
Posted by DeLong at October 31, 2002 02:56 PM | TrackbackSlate says the 419 is so widespread that it is spreading computer literacy to a generation in Nigeria. "The wiring of Nigeria is being propelled by 419 ..."
And that it's so widespread because it works. "...about 1 percent of recipients actually respond. Of that number, enough people fork over enough cash to sustain an industry that ranks in Nigeria's top five, right up there with palm oil and tin. The U.S. Secret Service has estimated —conservatively, by its own admission — that the scammers net $100 million per year."
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2072851
BTW, the Nigerians seem to love blogs. I get far more 419s on the e-mail address I use only for posting in the comments section on this and a couple of other webblogs than I do on other addresses that I've spread around usenet and the web for years.
I've been astonished at the number of hard-working, upright people who are willing to risk money in shady money-for-nothing scams which are presented as illegal right from the beginning. (For some reason a criminal is going to let a total stranger in on the game). A rather stodgy family-oriented professional I know dropped five figures on a similiar, non-Nigerian scam.
It correlates with the amount of magical thinking there is among ambitious, positive thinking people. There are only about five ways to get money: inheritance, hard work and talent in some combination, crime, parasitism, and dumb luck. And even crime and parasitism require hard work and talent. So the only really easy money is in dumb luck, and probably a hundred million people are going after what little dumb-luck money there is.
There is a rational model -- call it the Korean model -- for making it: the husband and wife each work or go to school 80 hrs. a week, postpone family, eat out in restaurants about three times a year, and save and invest everything. Almost nobody wants to do this; can't understand why.
The dot-com bubble is an example of what I'm thinking of, of course. Some of those companies had no possibility of succeeding, but they were magical "internet" companies. (And it worked for the founders who got out in time).
Ladies and gentlemen of the audience, that was the leftist slacker point of view. Next we will have a opposing spokesmen for the New Age Futurological Self-enhancement point of view.