I flagged your comment. Sorry if it was douchey of me to flag it rather than just ping you in chat or something. Personally I thought your comment was funny. I didn't feel it was very bad or anything, but IMO it was just not a good welcome to the OP (to make fun of their ignorance.) Maybe next time I'll just ping you in chat, instead of "telling dad"? I realize that might not be such a cool thing to do.
@CMaster
Anyway, I just felt a flag was the easiest, fastest way to deal with it.
If they try it on hundreds or even thousands of people, probability dictates that they'll bump into someone stupid once in a while, giving them a profit.
@Willeke Exactly. It's a basic calculation of expected value.
Although, judging from many of these scams that look like they were created by absolute retards, I'm not sure if those guys know what EV is or how to calculate it.
I have gotten an e-mail from a friend that he was on a London airport, out of money and I smelled something fishy. As a common friend of us lives just 20 minutes drive from that airport while two more and within an hours drive, for me it is an hour flying, and he is not that close a friend.
We have a good system that people can not be called by Dutch companies, so now we get English language calls. Not me as much, my parents who are home most of the day more so. They have learned to put down the phone when someone does speak English.
@Berwyn Wow, yeah. The smart thing about that scam is that they get the victim in love with a fictional man. When she's in love, she loses the ability to reason.
@Fiksdal the scam letters are clumsy so the potential marks self-select for gullibility. Someone responding to a clumsy scam is more likely to be gullible and less likely to catch on too quickly for the scammer's liking.
"By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor."
When they've got the victim properly fooled, they arrange a meeting and go for the "detained" story. Only then comes the phone call. At that point, the phone call will have a higher success ratio because the victim has been properly wooed and has an emotional attachment.
Actually, the OP here fits such a story very well. She says "her fiance" but that might be a fictional man she has been tricked into falling in love with through online chats and who has promised to marry her.
I have seen victims on TV, with photos, personal stories, exchange of e-mails and calls, to find that the guy had never been in the US army or some basic fact like that.
if you're the kind of person who thinks "wait a minute, do they have customs facilities at DCA?" you're not the kind of person who will fall for the scam anyway, so they might as well weed you out right away
I mean it's entirely possible that she has a real fiance who went to Nigeria for work, somebody there learned a bit about his life and his trip and passed that info on to the scammers, and it went from there. But there could well be a relationship scam involved too
The scammers have used a fictional man to make her fall in love. Now she thinks she is going to marry this fictional man, and they're going in for the kill.
the one mistake they made is that she apparently doesn't have the ability to produce $2,500, because it sure sounds like she would have paid it if she had the money
@Berwyn Anyway, it looks like she has taken the warnings she got on TSE and she has said she's not gonna send any money to the scammers. So mission accomplished I guess.
@ZachLipton And it was already entirely too much?
Last thing now is to satisfy TSE's deep curiousity about the dynamics of the scam.
OP may not be willing to accept the fact that her fiance is a fraud/fictional. (If that's the case.)
um, this gets into stalker territory, but she posted publicly a thing on facebook several months ago that's all "How to recognize a scam artist" about relationship scams
but the fact that she was concerned about relationship scams, like the photo she posted was government advice about not sending people money because they claim to be stranded overseas, is interesting
Especially not if it helps them keep faith in the handsome boyfriend they have found online.
Well, this fictional man may have wooed her and romanced her online for some time
Some guy on a laptop somewhere wooing 50 victim women at the same time.
But she's one of his brighter victims, so she's been ambivalent about it the whole time, suspecting something is wrong. But the allure of romance might have kept her from cutting it off. Some part of her wants to believe it's true.
Now that the money request has come, she smells foul. Which is why she posted to TSE.
But part of her is heartbroken because she still wants her boyfriend to be real.
So it was exactly that, a fake man romancing her up online.
But she realized it last time.
Why did she almost fall for it again?
The hope of finding love maybe. Maybe she'd told herself she'd go along with it, in case it was real, but not give any money. Now that he's asked for money, the illusion is bursting, but she's asking on TSE just to see.
Anyway, if I had to guess, I'd say that's what happened here. I don't know of course, but that's what I'd put my money on.
@RoflcoptrException I don't think this is a troll. Seems like a real scam victim to me. See the links and discussion by @ZachLipton and I. Which of course means that this was a legitimate user asking for and getting help, and should therefore not be deleted. @chx
@pnuts You mean close it later, in case it invites more people to start asking "is this a scam" questions?
OPs question was basically a really stupid but on-topic question. I downvoted it (although it was good that OP posted it, otherwise she might have been scammed) but I wouldn't close it. It's a stupid, on-topic question.
I mean IF it is a scam attempt (seems V. likely) then the Q is hypothetical (you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”) and the trouble then is it is not practical to clarify all the details that may be relevant (nationality of fiance, value of the equipment, is it sales tax or fines, where purchased, who owns it, in use for how long + goodness knows what similar/else may be relevant for a good answer.
"Can customs make someone bring equipment back to Nigeria?" is still hypothetical if Customs are NOT trying to make someone bring equipment back to Nigeria (because the whole thing is pure fiction).
I think what the Help Centre means by hypothetical "What if questions" are questions that aren't related to any real-life problem, questions that people ask just to quench their intellectual curiosity.
@phoog Exactly. It's not a hypothetical question. OP is actually having a real life problem related to travel, and needs help.
The help centre section is there to stop people with too much time on their hands to ask hypothetical question just for the heck of it or for reputation. Not to prevent people with actual problems from getting help by asking questions that are actually travel related.
@phoog Taking @Fiksdal's point that what was asked by OP was "Can Customs make me go back to return my electronic equipmenr?" and part of 1 of 4 As (why the other 3?) "No, the Customs cannot make you go back, and return the equipment." then there is hardly likely to be a real situation where they do do so.
the question is on-topic. the answers get off into off-topic territory, but that's the only responsible way to help someone. It would be horrible to try to answer the question without discussing the scam
@ZachLipton It's marginal, "hypothetical" is part of "avoid asking subjective questions". But if the whole thing is a figment then IMO on the off topic side.
yeah that would have been silly. the extravagant part was that the avocados came separately from everything else in a big insulated bag with six ice packs
anyway, sorry for the very much off-topic discussion
