The Archive

Internetted

Finally an answer.

I’ve often wondered who on earth would be moron enough to fall for any of the painfully transparent internet scams I seem to receive on a daily basis.

Do people not wonder why refugee Nigerians want to give them millions of pounds? Do they not suspect that winning a lottery that they haven’t actually entered is just a teensy bit suspicious?

Surely nobody falls for this nonsense right?

Wrong.

Australian farmer Des Gregor fell for a scam and ended up, after travelling to Mali to meet his new Liberian bride, kidnapped and assaulted.

On first reading, and with the sympathetic headline, I thought this meant the poor guy was lonely, fell in love with a gold digger on the internet and was ‘had’.

It could happen to anyone (although personally I prefer Russians with ‘white hair of the blonde’, as you know).

And then I read the fateful sentence "..believing he was going to meet his future bride, a Liberian refugee called Natacha in her 20s, and pocket a £43,000 dowry."

So poor Mr Gregor was under the impression he was going to get a hot Liberian honey in her 20s AND be paid forty grand for the privilege.

Oh Mr Gregor. Was it love that addled your mind? Or the money?

I suppose we’ll never know.

I don’t want to be a hypocrite though (after all, I have railed against adverts telling me not to be a victim in the past), so you do have to feel sorry for the poor chap.

After all, being painfully gullible is not a crime whereas kidnapping and beating a man with a machete most certainly is.

To his credit, Mr Gregor is quite open about his experience, explaining that "The first indication I had there was something wrong was when we got to the flat, they called out for somebody's name and the person that was supposed to meet me there weren't there."

This apparently caused the (rather belated) alarm bells to ring. Then there was a second indication that something was wrong, and it was a doozy…

"We walked in and there was one bloke with I would say a home-made pistol and another with a machete."

Yup. Definitely a bad sign.

Now I’ve been on a few internet dates in my time and on a few occasions the other person didn’t resemble her profile all that closely, but she’s never turned out to be a man with a machete. So I guess I’ve got off lightly.

Fortunately for me, I won’t be falling for such a scam because I don’t need the money – turns out I’ve just won the Ecuadorian Lottery. I’m sending them my bank details this afternoon.

posted by Peter The Great @ 10:59 AM