Throughout his reaming by the Nigerian scammers, Worley was presented with reason after reason for flipping off the thieves. He rationalized bad checks and ignored respelled/misspelled names while constantly shelling out LOTS of money to an ever changing roster of players. And he did all of this in the year 2006 when the Nigerian e-mail scam has been a punch line to jokes for several years.
If you have email, then you've no doubt seen the spam from some foreign dignitary who needs your help getting some money out of his country. He'll share it with you, just so long as you "help" with some upfront costs.
It's a transparent con, which we've all received far too often, and which we all delete immediately after it hits our inbox. Well, maybe not all. Meet John Worley — decorated Vietnam veteran, ordained minister, Christian psychotherapist, and in one awful case of misjudgment, mark.
Worley scrolled through his in-box and opened an e-mail, addressed to "CEO/Owner." The writer said that his name was Captain Joshua Mbote, and he offered an awkwardly phrased proposition: "With regards to your trustworthiness and reliability, I decided to seek your assistance in transferring some money out of South Africa into your country, for onward dispatch and investment." Mbote explained that he had been chief of security for the Congolese President Laurent Kabila, who had secretly sent him to South Africa to buy weapons for a force of elite bodyguards. But Kabila had been assassinated before Mbote could complete the mission. "I quickly decided to stop all negotiations and divert the funds to my personal use, as it was a golden opportunity, and I could not return to my country due to my loyalty to the government of Laurent Kabila," Mbote wrote. Now Mbote had fifty-five million American dollars, in cash, and he needed a discreet partner with an overseas bank account. That partner, of course, would be richly rewarded. […]
Still, Worley, faced with an e-mail that would, according to federal authorities, eventually lead him to join a gang of Nigerian criminals seeking to defraud U.S. banks, didn't hesitate. A few minutes after receiving Mbote's entreaty, he replied, "I can help and I am interested."
Needless to say, this was not the right response.
It's a remarkable, albeit depressing, story. If you've ever wondered what happens to the poor victim of one of these cons, you'll have to read this article. It's stunning.
"American culture is uniquely prone to the 'too good to miss' fallacy. 'Opportunity' is our favorite word. What may seem reckless and feckless and hapless to people in many parts of the world seems a justifiable risk to Americans."
