From time-to-time we've all seen the email investment scams and (more recently) telephone messages warning people that IRS is about to seize their property or come arrest them. One consistent theme in all of them is bad grammar/syntax coupled with poor punctuation and a combination of run-on sentences followed by sentence fragments. Most of the time the errors are laughably obvious.
On an investing forum that I frequent, one person suggested that these "errors" are actually a screening device. The idea is that the "errors" are signals to drive an analytical person away. The scammers don't want to waste their time with someone savvy enough to figure out the scam. They are looking for the gullible and naïve. So if someone actually responds to their pitch, they have passed the initial test as a potential victim. When the scammer hears from someone that gullible, they are more likely to be ripe for picking. Interesting theory, and the more I think about it the more I agree with the proposition.
On an investing forum that I frequent, one person suggested that these "errors" are actually a screening device. The idea is that the "errors" are signals to drive an analytical person away. The scammers don't want to waste their time with someone savvy enough to figure out the scam. They are looking for the gullible and naïve. So if someone actually responds to their pitch, they have passed the initial test as a potential victim. When the scammer hears from someone that gullible, they are more likely to be ripe for picking. Interesting theory, and the more I think about it the more I agree with the proposition.
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