As someone who had a friend that was a compulsive gambler, who borrowed and “took investments” from everyone that trusted them and never paid back, I have learnt a few things:
1. They don’t necessarily mean bad when they take your money. They can be capable of starting a legitimate business, and intend for it to go to a real investment, but once the money is in their hands, it becomes a super-addictive drug, and they can’t help but gamble it.
2. When they gamble, they convince themselves that they will double or triple the money in a matter of days, and nobody will even know that the money was missing for a few days.
3. Gambling leads to more gambling. When the gamble goes bad, they become even more tied up in a web of debt, and more desperate to score a big “win” to free them from their crippling debt. The more desperate, the greater the gamble they are willing to take.
The story unfolding here is giving me those vibes. I am getting a feeling that he tried using this money to make a quick fortune in some investment (maybe crypto?) that someone might have talked him into, and it went badly. He was supposed to have the money back quickly, and “nobody would even notice”.
The story of the phishing email is too embelished. He was talking with an FBI agent, but couldn’t remember the agents’ name? He keeps going on and on about how other people were also scammed by phishing, as if to lend credibility to his story. If the story were true, there is no reason to babble about it and sugarcoat it.
If my feeling is correct, then he does not have any money or plan. What they tend to do is try to push it off as much as possible, hoping upon hope that they will somehow be able to get money from somewhere, even to go as far as trying to Ponzi-scheme their way into paying back part of the money.
Lastly, the people that tend to be nicest to the scammer are the victims. The reason is that they are so scared of losing their money that they don’t want to “rock the boat”. They are hoping that by being nice, he won’t abandon them and leave them hanging. The scammer inherently knows this, and that is why he kept shouting in the interview that he doesn’t want to speak to anyone who was not part of the Pesach program.
I hope I am wrong.
Topic Wiki
