In Reply to: and your post posted by Angela on Wednesday, 22. June 2005 at 07:50 Bali Time:
For starters... No, this could never happen to me. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been invited to gamble in Indonesia. It's a no-win situation. Either I lose money, or I win money from someone in a country where the average wage is around 1/15th of the dole in Australia. How could I feel good about that? And there is no way in hell I would agree to take part in a scam to rip someone else off. Not only for moral reasons, but because I don't want to wind up in jail.
Secondly, you talk about my 'unthinking post'. I actually put a lot of thought into it, trying to come up with a reason that would result in any benefit to the scammers killing or harming someone who chose not to play. I couldn't find one. Can you? Why would the police or the bank be involved? They're not essential to the scam. It would just be more people to share the money with.
It's not because of posts like mine that people are too ashamed to report these crimes. It's because they are criminals themselves. In one of your other posts you wrote something like "There will always be people who prey on your good nature". Now THAT is an unthinking comment. What they prey on is the lust and greed of the target. They show a pretty girl, because men think that if they help the pretty girl she might shag him. And then they invite the guy to make some money by ripping off someone else. Since when does agreeing to defraud someone else show a "good nature"?
Now, it sounds as though nomadmac is generally a decent sort of guy. But if he had followed the good side of his nature and declined the offer to make some quick cash illegally, at someone else's expense, all he would have lost is a couple of hours of his time.
Instead, he's got a pretty cool story to tell his friends.