but I'm sure that my money is still on it's way . . . https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/12/30/more-trouble-for-the-nigerian-prince-louisiana-police-say-they-caught-scams-middle-man/?utm_term=.8a0d3f4b5dfc
I just knew that guy was a fake Nigerian prince from Louisiana! The email started with "I have good news for y'all!" Kizmet, your money's not coming - I gua-rahn-tee! On n'est pas fini jusqu'à la grosse dame joue à l'accordéon. (It ain't over till the fat lady plays the accordion.) Aiyeee - laissez les bons temps rouler!
Now I know why I haven't heard from my Nigerian Prince https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nigerian-astronaut-lost-in-space/
I had not known, until reading the articles, that the Nigerian prince scam goes all the way back to the 1920s. The first adhesive postage stamp went on sale May 1, 1840. I'd love to know how long it was before the first postal scam was launched.
I'm thinking back to The Count of Monte Cristo and how he used the semaphore telegraph to manipulate the Paris stock market. It was a fictional account of course but it shows that even back then people were thinking about what we today would call "wire fraud."
Now I know why I haven't heard from my Nigerian Prince. He's Tahitian https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009333/Fake-Tahitian-prince-scammed-nearly-20M-Australians-wont-pay-fortune.html
My Nigerian Prince - here's how the scam works https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/nigerian-prince-scam-social-engineering
Actually, John, both postal service and postal scams pre-date the adhesive stamp. The Roman cursus publicus was one of the first postal services and operated throughout the Roman Empire. I have no idea of the fraud statistics associated with it, though. Much later, in 1683, the UK's Royal Mail service created its criminal-investigations authority. In Canada, Charles Ponzi remains one of the best-known of those convicted of postal fraud. And of course, who can forget Clifford Irving and Jim Bakker? Interesting article here: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/98-years-of-mail-fraud/559661/
I wonder if Ponzi was sincere at the start. He really did find an anomaly in the matter of International Reply Coupons. When I was selling my degree book overseas, I accepted the equivalent of $20 in those coupons. In some countries, the buyer only had to spend the equivalent of $1 or $2 to buy that many coupons, which I could then turn in, at my post office, for $20 worth of stamps. So all I'd have to do (Ponzi realized) is go to Albania or Peru and buy a million dollars worth of reply coupons for $10,000, then convert them to US stamps worth a million. The scheme failed because there simply weren't nearly enough reply coupons in existence in those countries. And that is when Ponzi made the decision to keep on selling futures, knowing he could never deliver. (And then, later, as I recall, he came up with a scheme to buy the US Navy, all its ships, which were essentially for sale after the war, and make floating hotels and shopping malls.)
Strangely, Jim Bakker is again in the news https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/new-york-ag-orders-televangelist-jim-bakker-to-stop-advertising-silver-solution-as-coronavirus-treatment/ar-BB10SXfF?ocid=spartanntp
Once a fraud, always a fraud, it seems. Maybe he should go back to jail for a refresher course. Or maybe the WHO - or the CDC in Atlanta - can have Jim Bakker declared a potentially dangerous organism. Quarantine him and his entire audience!
Bakker is really nothing more than a low-life criminal https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1240688941105205248
