Overheard in the café

The other day Mrs H and I dropped into a café before a short walk and overheard two chaps chatting about financial matters. They were discussing the relative merits of various investments, particularly stock market investments, when one chap began to tell the tale of a scam he’d fallen for.

It sounded as if it occurred a while ago and the nature of the scam wasn’t entirely clear from what was said, but involved him buying something fairly expensive online. “I was sold the dream”, he said, although it wasn’t clear what the dream was.

Anyway, he paid for the dream by bank transfer, received nothing in return and both addresses of the outfit he thought he was dealing with turned out to be bogus. Once he found this out he contacted the police.

He never saw his money again but the scammer had taken in a number of people and the police managed to find out who he was. He turned out to be someone running the scam from prison so eventually he had another few years tacked onto his sentence.

The interesting aspect for us was that the chap who was scammed admitted that he couldn’t understand how he fell for it. He thought of himself as financially aware, familiar with the hazards of an online world, yet he was taken in by the emotional appeal of the scammer’s swindle. He didn’t sound particularly bitter about it, but still puzzled about being taken in.

Maybe it’s not wildly different to politics – hit the right note and you get the vote.