*an idiot

You can’t fix stupid.....

poor guy.

he is missing something from his life and is desperate to find it. there is no helping him.

if he was my buddy, i think i would have to bow out of the friendship. to protect myself from blowing a brain gasket.

i wish the happy couple luck..i hope he at least gets a reach around.

Have an 80 yo brother that has made similar bad decisions...has gone thru all his money and then some. Somehow they are getting $200 a month from his Social Security.

Thanks, that made me laugh :)


Your right about the greed. He told one of our group that he wants to pile the gold on the table and show us all how wrong we were. He forgot the guy he told is one of "us". :)

The "girlfriend" is probably a guy. The original girl probably sold his contact to someone else. I told him he's been saying "I love you" to some guy for several months.

It's not the future, sir, it's right here, right now, but with a slightly prettier façade.

Friends don’t abandon each other when times get tough. Also, friends are not enablers. Here in lies the rub.:(

That's the conundrum...up to a point imo.

If someone chooses to self destruct, at some point, I no longer feel obligated to watch...
It's not healthy for me either...YMMV.

Another perspective is that your "buddy" has a friend who is an idiot.............

:(

Years ago I had an epiphany regarding ALL of my friends...they all had ONE thing in common:

An friend who was an idiot ;)

Wow! I had no idea that was a side effect of diabeetus!! That is downright depressing.


You have to wonder if his just don't work why is he chasing tail?

I know you explained already just does not make sense.

Email him a link to this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG7a8CGJs5g

:(

What makes you think he would believe anything that was posted here?

Everything that I have posted I have said to his face.

I am not alone. There are 5 of us who have known him for a total of over 200 years and he won't believe us. We all have told him he was being scammed.

Now you all know how i feel about all of you...

Ha!

Well....that's just being downright Tabby if'n ya ask me....be nice or leave ;)

I thought this thread was about Tabs.

Maybe instead of broad fortune cookie generalities you gave some specifics as to dated timelines and events people might be more receptive.

Like a Siamese Cat that thinks it is a Bengal Tiger. You should be lord of all you survey, from that high and lofty perch, but in reality, you need to clean your litter box.

I had a friend once that I gave a job and a substantial raise. He blew thirty thousand dollars having an affair with his daughter's BFF. He did not want help, did not need help, and hit a pretty hard bottom. I did not pick him up twice, but I did give him some pretty solid advice some time later, when he was about to screw up again.

People have to do what they have to do. I have seen worse.

He could be suffering from a mental health disorder.

I have a buddy who is a idiot
 

I think I tried to buy tools from this guy on Craigslist

Update: He was paid a visit by the local PD Fraud squad. He actually went down to the station and met them in their offices. They had a file on him and his new "friends'. According to him the "International police" called the local PD. His words.....maybe Interpol? The "girl" he has been sending money to is actually a model from New York. The Cons stole her pictures and use them so idiots like him think they are talking to a real woman. It was then that I pointed out that he had been saying "I love you" to some guy for the last 4 months. He got a little upset at me for that one. :)

So I asked him what else did the police have to say? His answer "Quit sending them money" I pointed out that will never happen and he asked why I would say that. My answer was "We (the 5 of us) have been saying that to you for a year now and you won't listen to us. He got really mad at that. :)

We did find out the last $12,000 he sent the con men he got by taking out a reverse mortgage on his house. He's so screwed. :(

why didn't he just blow it on hookers & blow
at least he would have gotten something for his money

For 12 K , they WILL love you long time.
just don't give it all in one go and never give hints about how deep that well is.

Daaaaaaaaaang....

Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.

It must be tough to want something so bad that you would go to these lengths. And sadder still, there are women out there who probably would have responded.

It must have been very satisfying telling him "I told ya so".
This is highly underrated.

Sounds like money well spent compared to this guy who got nothing for his trouble. Reminds me of the American Pie thread.

Sadly, with the almost $100K he spent (and never met this woman), he could have found a local woman with average looks who would spent every minute with him for years if he was the least bit nice to her.One does not have to sound a lot of money to find platonic (or otherwise) feminine companionship. All he would have to do is pay for dinner to get companionship.

I could have been a whole lot worse.

A local current affairs program reported that an elderly gentleman sent about $800,000 to a "lady" in Africa.
He sent her multiple chunks of money over a period of 18 months!

Another not so bright lady I know started to send money to a man in Africa who had a medical condition that required expensive treatment & medicine.
I told her she was being foolish but she tried to justify it by saying she was convinced he was genuine and she had the money to spare.
Meanwhile he kept asking for more and it soon reached $1,800 in total. Then he got greedy and asked her for another $5,000. At that point she stopped.
(She met him on a dating site and all of this was done via emails. Not once did she talk to him on the phone.)

Most of us wouldn't be taken in by a scam like this but these criminals aren't looking for most people.
They just hit the numbers until they find that special 1 in 10,000 idiot.

And from their twisted point of view? If you're dumb enough to fall for it you don't deserve to have that money anyway.
I worked in Africa for about 9 months and they view us as ungrateful spoiled idiots.

The typical scam here is to call old folks and say, "Hi grandma/grandpa" depending in who answers. Usually the old person says...Is that you, "Johnny", "Sue," etc. Then they go on to say that they were on a road trip and the car broke down, they got locked up at spring break, lost their money/credit card, etc...and need money to get home. They say, please don't tell mom/dad as they would get punished mightily. The oldester usually sends them a money order...or even cash in an envelope. They are great at getting enough info out of the silly old person to fools them. Sometimes they have info on grandkids (names, sex, age...schools maybe). Had my mom convinced and ready to send money...but then they screwed the story up.

It seems everyone is looking for love...either a mate or grandkid...and the elderly folks are often the loneliest of all.

Wow, that's something else
 

I couldn't be "friends" with someone like that. I'd have to bail.

Anyhow, funny site here with good stories on 419 scams Welcome to the 419 Eater

Well, on the positive side if he comes to USA it's only $60K lost due to the exchange rate :D

Schadenfreude is another thread all unto itself.

Actually no, He's still a friend and friends make mistakes. Him realising that it's all been a con and him stopping sending them money has been the ultimate goal. No one likes to see their friends fail ..... at anything.

I could have walked away but it wasn't my money. It didn't effect me in anyway except for the frustration of not getting thru to him and remember there are 4 other friends who feel the same as me. It would be like someone getting terminal cancer and never going to visit them in the hospital or stop being friends with someone who still smokes.

Buddy and friend are two very different things in my mind.

People scam folks who are vulnerable whether because of age/dementia, disability, mental health issues. They are surprisingly good at it. We have been working to move my Mom's money around so she can't get to it so easily as she is a perfect target right now.

I'm pretty sure the incompetents aren't the biggest group...

The best leverage for scams are lonelyness & greed.

Many perfectly healthy adults that are reasonably functional professionals have been suckered in with either promises of love, or promises that are too good to be true .

So either desperately hoping to find somebody in love
or thinking they are so smart they found the best deal to get rich, and thinking they don't want to let anybody else in for fear they might loose out.

You may want to stay on him and make certain he abides by that.

He could double down on stupid, I'm sure it's happened to other people.

I did it with a penny stock once, just $50, but $50 of stupid.

We are pretty sure he out of funds so the chance of him sending them any more money is pretty well done. It's too bad because that money could have made life comfortable for him for the next 15-20 years. Instead he's dropping a resume for some **** job at the age 65 and is in bad health.

So Idiot decided he needs romance in his life and he goes on Winnipeg Hookers.com or some other such web site and makes a "date".

No matter what your beliefs are about this it is still illegal in Canada. In fact the law was changed in 2014 to: "Current laws on prostitution in Canada, introduced in 2014, make it illegal to purchase sexual services but legal to sell them."

This puts the legal aspects of the law on the "Johns" and not the working girl. Every once in awhile the police do a sweep and round up a bunch of johns and publish their names in the paper.

So Idiot does this on the same computer that the police told him they have been reading his emails with the con men. They also told him the local guy who worked on his computer installed spy ware. This means they probably read him making the date and discussing prices for services.

He's gone from idiot to moron.