Ben Carlson - Dont Fall For It

Ben Carlson

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: Man_Half-tube/Getty Images

Copyright 2020 by Ben Carlson. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993, or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Carlson, Benjamin Patrick, 1981- author.

Title: Don't fall for it : a short history of financial scams / Benjamin

Patrick Carlson.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2020] |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019032942 (print) | LCCN 2019032943 (ebook) | ISBN

9781119605164 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119605195 (adobe pdf) | ISBN

9781119605188 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Swindlers and swindlingCase studies. | FraudCase

studies. | Financial crimes--Case studies.

Classification: LCC HV6691 .C375 2020 (print) | LCC HV6691 (ebook) | DDC

364.16/309--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032942

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032943

The most instructive, indeed the only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitude of fortune, is to recall the catastrophe of others.

Polybius

In 2008, a self-employed handyman named Fred Haines was wandering around Wichitas Dwight D. Eisenhower airport in search of a Nigerian man carrying two chests full of cold hard cash. After asking around and waiting for an hour or so he finally realized the $64 million inheritance he was promised in an email from Nigeria wasnt walking off an airplane.

Over a period from 2005 to 2008, Haines mortgaged his home three times in hopes that forking over six figures of cash would be enough to help him receive a seven-figure inheritance from Africa. Its hard to believe the Nigerian Prince scam could be so effective but some people just want to believe these things could be true. Haines claims the first email he received did come off as some sort of joke or scam. Nevertheless, he was intrigued as the person on the other end of his correspondence promised Haines he was owed tens of millions of dollars of an inheritance that rightfully belonged to him. The scammers told Haines his money was being moved from country to country but they needed money along the way to grease the wheels of international law that were overseeing the movement of his funds.

The scammers said at one point that the money had gone from Nigeria to Egypt to England to New York and once again back to Nigeria. Haines claims to have tried to get back the money after he sent it, but after going so deep down this rabbit hole he had convinced himself it couldnt be a scam. It got to the point where they were showing me that the president of Nigeria had sent me a letter. It had his picture on it and everything, Haines said. I looked it up on the computer to see what the Nigerian president looked like, and it was him.

Then there was the email he received from Robert Mueller, Director of the FBI at the time, and a man who is now widely known for conducting an investigation of some sort on the 45th President of the United States. The subject line of this email read:

The text showed a picture of Mueller in the top left-hand corner and was littered with grammatical errors. It read:

I receive your email and for your good and successful of operation of your account, I will advise you to look for the fee and send to them you can see that your funds is available, and everything is clear no trick on it. Looks for some one [sic] and borrow then promise to pay in three days.

You may be shocked to learn FBI Director Robert Mueller didnt actually send an email to a man in Kansas about a secret inheritance from a Nigerian prince. This was, in fact, a fake. The problem was Haines had already gone too far to give up at that point, so he held out a glimmer of hope the money was still coming. Those Nigerians know how to talk, was his explanation for getting caught up in this fantasy. Luckily, Haines was able to recover $110,000 of what he lost in a settlement with Western Union, but others havent been so lucky.[]

In the late-1980s a money-making scheme called the Airplane Game was invented and the rules were quite simple. All you had to do was hand over $1,500 and the game would, in turn, give you back $12,000. What a world, right?

The reason it was called the Airplane Game is that every new player became one of eight passengers on a flight that also consisted of four flight attendants, two co-pilots, and a pilot. All eight passengers put in their $1,500 which went directly to the pilot as their cost of admission on the flight. The pilot then left the game having already put in their own initial $1,500 and working their way up the ladder. The co-pilot then started two new planes, where each passenger was required to bring on a new passenger (and thus $1,500 more per person). After each successive round, the passengers moved up to flight attendants and then became pilots themselves after a turn as co-pilot, picking up their $12,000. And the more people you brought into the game, the faster you earned your payout.[]

This idea spread quickly to other areas across the country. It only took four days in some cases for people to move up the ranks to become a pilot and cash out. The game worked so well for so long that many players went through the process on multiple occasions, each time picking up a cool twelve grand. One man in Florida worked his way through the airplane nine times, making more than $100,000 in the process.[]