Of starry schemes

Like many, I have received occasional offers from friendly and helpful people, most of whom seem to be based in Nigeria, who are anxious for me to share in their good fortune. They usually explain that they are the true owners of a vast pool of money languishing in a bank account in Nigeria, and are quite willing to share it with me in a mutual and lasting respectful relationship. This will all come to pass, they promise, if I could just help out with a (comparatively) small amount of money up front in order for them to secure the release of their benefically and legally owned funds.

These are good for the odd laugh, much in the way that I enjoy laughing at urban myths. The amusing part, to me at least, is how anyone could think they were true, when they never make sense even on their own terms. Like the urban myth about the radio exchange between an arrogant US aircraft carrier commander and what turns out to be a lighthouse: aside from the date and location changing with each retelling, they usually get something like the name of the aircraft carrier wrong, which one presumes is not a mistake the vessel's commander might make in real life.

Or the one about the chap who successfully claimed on insurance that his cigars had been destroyed by "a series of small fires", but ended up getting convicted of arson: no insurance policy ever written would cover intentional damage, and you can't be convicted of arson if you burn your own property with no damage to anyone else's.

In a similar fashion the instant-win scams usually get some key date wrong or omit some relevant detail.

About the oldest scam going is of course astrology. It is true that every celestial body exerts a gravitational force on every other. But the amount exerted on us human beings is ludicrously small: as near to zero as makes no difference. Therefore the very idea that our behaviour might be changed by the movement of Pisces or whatever is utterly, incontestably absurd. Moreover, it doesn't even work on its own terms. The sum total of astronomical knowledge when all the nonsense about star signs was first invented was far lower than it is today. Even now we do not have complete knowledge of the Kuiper belt, and yet by the logic of astrologists its discovery should have made a hash of all their previous calculations.

The puzzling thing to me has always been how on earth all the charlatans and fraudsters offering astrological advice and Nigerian banking get-rich-quick schemes make a living; in other words, who on earth falls for their snake oil and skullduggery? The old saying "if something sounds too good to be true, that's because it is" should be enough to dissade anyone from writing the cheque.

Sadly, the answer should have been as obvious to me as the fraudulent nature of the schemes themselves. Those who fall for them are the most vulnerable: the most poor, least educated and those amongst the elderly whose mental powers and therefore judgement have declined. There is a sad tale on the BBC website today about someone whose elderly mother was a very unfortunate victim. It concludes that the government should take steps to ban these scams. I doubt it would work; fraudsters will just sharpen up their practice.

A better (and indeed not mutually exclusive) solution would be better publicity: and here the BBC could help, by running a few consumer programmes exposing such scams. Or would someone acting out of misguided politically correct idiocy not want to upset the poor old astrologers?