Woman Loses $400,000 To Nigerian Email Scam
Why did this woman, a reverend and a nurse, give over $400,000 to Nigerian email scammers? It started with just $100. The emails told her a long-lost relative with the same last name had $20.5 million caught up in the banks of Nigeria. Janella Spears just had to help with a few processing fees...
As she sent the money, more and more obstacles would arise, each needing more money to solve. Driven by blind greed, she sent over $400,000 to the scammers, draining her and her husband's savings, retirement fund, mortgaged the house and put a lien on the car.
Despite warning from family and friends for over two years that it was a scam, she was obsessed with getting the jackpot. Only after Department of Justice investigators happened across her $144,000 Western Union transfers while investigating a different money laundering did she stop. She only stopped because the DoJ told her if she sent any more money they would charge her with a crime
That's why these emails will continue to clog our spam filters. There will always be someone greedy out there where the prospect of a huge payday with just trip something in their brain and they suspend all reason and let themselves get bled dry.
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Comments:
Good grief! How stupid can anyone be? Is she the last remaining person in America who doesn't know that this is a scam? DUMBASS!
@XianZhuXuande: I was pretty much going to say the same thing. Greedy people's greed will always get them in the end.
Off topic, but I think this woman looks a little like Neil Diamond. Anyone else?
Agreed...plus it mentions that her family and friends tried to tell her it was a scam.
What an idiot
you mean someone greedy and stupid.
She wouldn't have needed to if those damn Goonies didn't steal her treasure!
There was a long and detailed scammer victim story in the New Yorker a few years back. Say what you want about the marks being stupid, if you read the article its hard not to feel empathy for them.
If Woody would have called the police, none of this ever would have ever happened.
America needs a bailout for Nigerian Scammers!
@XianZhuXuande: It's like someone who gambles. You lose a bet, so you double down on the next one to try to recoup that. It spirals out of control from there, because you refuse to cut your losses and move on.
The thing that strikes me the most is that the bulk of warnings from REAL people in authority (FBI, Local police, Etc.) were dismissed in favor of their phony email counterparts.
@organicgardener: The thing that gets me about this, though, is that her family members were telling her that it was a scam over the two years it was occurring. Crazy.
I called a nigerian scammer an asshole the other day and he sent back a hilarious reply:
"Hey hey,please do not address me in that manner and i demand an apology from you for using such swear words on human being like you. Kindly have the item i paid for shipped because i want it to be with my pastor before his wedding ceremony and you know i can not afford to dissappoint him as i have already told him about this package.
Please do not hurt my feelings here."
I never received his money order. Strange! I love fishing for them every once in a while, on craigslist.
I wonder if she also signed up on Classmates.com because she received a message that someone was trying to contact her.
Would like to have sympathy, would like to feel awful for this woman, would love to find the asscracks in Nigeria who looted this woman.
With that being said, I can't because this Nigerian scam thing has been going on for years and most people should know what the hell is going and her own family and friends tried to stop her.
The thing I'm most pissed off about is that now that they got the 400k out of her it just pushes them to keep going for the next sucker!
Yeesh! And a big FTW!
@XianZhuXuande: Love the Edge icon.
You'd think the family/friends would stop her in time...a few YEARS? Are you kidding me? I guess it takes all kinds...
Janella Spears doesn't think she's a sucker or an easy mark.
Obviously not! She never would have sent money if she thought she was a sucker! Dumb people will always be dumb.
Thanks,you dimwit.
This big score will embolden the lowliest of Nigerian two-bit scammers to reach for the brass ring. This woman doesn't deserve our pity at all. She has just guaranteed an ever increasing flood of these fucking emails.
And yes, she does fucking look like Neil Diamond
No pity for this woman. She's dumb as a rock.
Reminds me of the Doug Stanhope bit where he's talking about elderly people getting scammed 11, 12 times in a row and then finally catching on.
"No, it's not because you're old...it's because you're dumb as a rock and you always have been."
Somebody that stupid doesn't deserve to have money.
@organicgardener: Agreed. Some people just do not belong on the Internet. Some people don't deserve to breathe. This woman has ruined both hers AND her husband's financial status, not to mention forget about her children ever receiving an inheritance.
What. A. Dumb. Greedy. Hag.
@XianZhuXuande:
///I feel like I should feel bad for someone in this position, but the greed required to fall for something like this makes it oh so very difficult. \\\
Especially to that extent.
Neil Diamond really doesn't deserve this kind of abuse! This babe is way more ugly...
Unlike some, I'm not going to insult this woman. Instead, I'm going to look at the sneakiness of the scammer. They don't say "Hey, send us $100,000 and we'll send you $400,000,000." That would raise huge flags. Instead, it's just a hundred bucks to start with. Processing fees and legal stuff. Then, oh no, we hit a snag, and need more.
Part of it is pure greed, true. But it seems so earnest and honest... (Really, you read the letters, they are horribly misspelled, but drip with earnestness). Then comes the catch : There's a point that the person is too far in to NOT hold out hope. If you stop now, admit you were scammed, you are a fool and out $400,000. But if there's just a tiny chance it's real...you'd have it all back...
Greed, yes. But also some hope. And finally, and this is the one that makes the huge difference: Crushing desperation.
@mrdeeno: I wouldn't recommend Classmates.com because I have no idea what it's morphed into by now but several years back I used it to get in touch with a fairly large number of my old school friends including my high school sweetheart who dumped me and ran off with some guy ten years older than either of us and...
Ah, never mind. %$#@ Classmates.com/
;)
It actually warms my heart a little to imagine how well off the nigerian who stumbled upon her is.
She probably bought them a giant house, a couple cars, and enough of a nest egg to live out the rest of thier days without ever touching a computer again.
And you know what? If she's that dumb, they deserve every penny. That's true capitalism, right there.
It's nice to be on the internet where you never make mistakes.
Yes, this lady made a huge one ($400,000!!!), but I've seen some people who are just ideal personalities to fall for these things. They're not bright, but if there's some einsteins out there, law of averages tends to mean there are people who aren't so bright. They are probably down on their luck because they aren't really smart enough to make things happen for themselves. And they are just dumb enough to believe these things because of the promise of a better life.
This lady could've had it pretty good if she had 400,000 "available" to her. The guy I knew who fell for the russian lady scam was so heartbroken. If you knew this lady, you'd say she's crazy/stupid/etc, but you'd feel bad for her. It's called senility, and it'll happen to you.
Way to kill human emotion, internet.
I think in this case it's ok to blame the victim.
She's a reverend too, shouldn't she be firmilliar with that bible passage about gaining the world at the cost of your soul?
Ah well. She's made her bed, and now must sleep in it.
Scammers recently got one of my e-mails recently. No idea how.
Funny thing was that I was telling some friends that work in the IT field that I got an e-mail telling me that I won the UK lottery and I only had to send $X in to claim my prize and they asked if I was going to do it...
*sigh* I need smarter f*****g friends.
Didn't Paul kill Annie?
@organicgardener: sadly, no. she's not the last one to get taken by this scam. & it's only going to get worse as people become more desperate for money.
While it's very easy to throw out labels for this woman, there may be more to this story than just stupidity and greed. My mother, a worldly woman in general, is experiencing significant money trouble. She got one of these emails and called me to ask my opinion. Obviously I told her it was a scam, but my mother's desperation led her to give the email serious consideration. I guess the difference here is she listened to me.
LOL she thought she was going to get Britney Spears' money.
Ok, stupid question. Why Nigeria? I'm sure there must be regular honest people in Nigeria. Are the scammers really in Nigeria; do they not have laws there?
I used to work at this teeny publishing company that published books about volunteerism and non-profits. That was it. We'd get credit card orders all the them from Nigeria that we wouldn't process, and we always wondered why they would want to try to get books about volunteerism.
I feel bad for victims in this case when (like many Americans right now) they are in debt, may lose their homes, and are desperate for a miricale (like playing the lottery).
BUT, if she can get together $400,000 to send to scamers, then she doesn't fall into that category. She wasn't on the verge of forclosure, or have excessive medical bills...she was just greedy.
And thus I don't feel bad for her.
Go Nigera!
Her family should have had her committed just to stop the financial bleeding....
I'm surprised no one has commented on the Department of Justice threatening to arrest her if she kept it up...so it's actually illegal to to piss your money away? Where do send our complaints about lottery addicts?
D-
Wow, if she did that to my money she'd be divorced and sued.
I agree with the posts above and their lack of sympathy for the 'victim' (idiot) in this situation. How could you not have even a single ounce of suspicion after being told to send money to someone you've never met, never heard of, and don't know? One would think to request some type of documentation. If they have computers in Nigera, you'd think they'd have fax machines.
These scams will always exist because there are people dumb enough to fall for them.
'There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him.' - PT Barnum
What really shocks me is that this woman went on TV to share her stupidity with the whole world. Or at least Portland, OR and the readers of Consumerist.
She kept sending money because she though that part of the bailout would be coming her way!
*thought*(sic)
She spent $400,000 of her and her husband's money... what... without his knowing? A few hundred or even thousand dollars, you might not notice, but after she'd spent $50,000 or so I think he should have taken specific legal steps to stop her. This woman is not of sound mind and he needed to protect himself from her.
I feel like I should feel bad for someone in this position, but the greed required to fall for something like this makes it oh so very difficult.