'Tis the Season to Scam the Greedy or Stupid

Anybody with an email account gets lots of shady soliciations that are obviously attempts to scam you out of your money. Most come from Nigeria and a recent attempt even involves a ficticious U.S. soldier. Given the silly nature of these emails you wouldn't think it would be possible for one of these scams to work in person, but they are:

A popular e-mail scam has been converted to a face-to-face con, where suspects accompany victims to a bank and then walk off with their money.

The long-running e-mail scam goes like this: The sender of an e-mail claims he or she has come into millions of dollars in a foreign currency and needs help because the money cannot be transferred. This person needs someone to give them money until they can exchange the inheritance, at which point they will pay back all of the money that was lent.

Two Irvine residents have apparently fallen for the face-to-face version of this con game.

On Saturday, an Irvine resident was approached by a man in the Spectrum Center parking lot near Target. The man said he needed a ride to a church where he intended to donate millions of dollars in foreign currency he had inherited, according to Police Lt. Rick Handfield.

The man reportedly said he would pay the resident $100 for driving him to the church. On the way, the two picked up a second man – supposedly just by chance – who provided some money as a sign of trust.

The Irvine resident took $6,000 from an account at Bank of America at 14222 Culver Drive, while the two men waited outside, supposedly to avoid the bank's security cameras.

The victim then drove the two men to Bethel Korean church on Harvard Avenue, where he said they walked off with his money.

In mid-October, an Irvine man lost jewelry he had taken from a safe-deposit box, and cash he had taken out of two or three banks, according to Handfield. He told police a similar story about being approached by a man at a grocery store in Northwood.

A third similar case happened in October in Westminster.

The victims are either greedy, stupid, or both. How you could hear a story like that and fall for it is beyond me.