How many foolish people are in the UK?

**beautifulrock** · 04/10/2007, 3:03 PM

Wrong, try again.

More than 3.2 million Britons have been caught out by conmen after being approached by email, letter or telephone, according to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/2007100...dba1618_1.html

The total cost of such scams and swindles is more than �3.5 billion every year.

The figures were revealed as the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) announced it has set its sights on the organised criminal gangs behind these frauds in the UK and abroad.

A large proportion of mass marketing fraud originates in English-speaking West African states and a recent month-long operation in Nigeria resulted in the seizure of 4,500 false documents including passports and identity cards.

Officials in the UK are working with other agencies in the US, Holland, Spain and Canada to tackle the menace.

Mass marketing fraud uses mass communication tools to reach large numbers of people cheaply and easily.

Paul Evans, director of intervention at Soca, said the UK has become a staging post for the illegal international trade.

He said police have closed thousands of British bank accounts linked to mass fraud and used by criminals to give their work legitimacy.

He said: "We are using new methods to tackle what is actually a very old fraud.

"You may take the view that there is 'one born every minute' but in some of the emails we have intercepted there are appalling examples of quite vicious exploitation, including threats of violence."

So these letters saying I am a member of the Royal Family of (insert) actually work, now is that crazy or is that crazy. To put in perspective the population of the UK is approx 60M.

**DaveyCakes** · 04/10/2007, 4:07 PM

3.2 million. I should be surprised, but I'm not. A large proportion of people are idiots.

**OwlsFan** · 04/10/2007, 4:10 PM

We all get them. The first one I remember was back in the 1970s from a "Government Minister" in some African country who had millions to hide and wanted my bank account details to put in some of the millions.

My aged aunt, a nun, fell for one of those false letters from the Bank of Scotland etc asking her to update her bank details.

A relative of mine fell for a South American scam where a woman he had been shafting in South America declared to him as he was getting on the plane to come home that she had one up the spout and could he send on maintenance every month. What she didn't realise was that he wasn't prepared to leave it at that and would return to live in South America for the sake of the "child" and when he did, there was of course no child.

I can think of a host of other scams I see every day.

**paul_oshea** · 05/10/2007, 2:12 PM

A relative of mine fell for a South American scam where a woman he had been shafting in South America declared to him as he was getting on the plane to come home that she had one up the spout and could he send on maintenance every month. What she didn't realise was that he wasn't prepared to leave it at that and would return to live in South America for the sake of the "child" and when he did, there was of course no child.

Does your relative still live there?!