I am sorry for the people who transferred their savings to those scammers. What astonishes me is how many people are willing to perform illegal things (because what those scammers are offering always requires to do something illegal).
I'm not sorry for them. I realize this is probably going to be an unpopular view, but: the 419 (and similar) scams take advantage not just of technical illiteracy, general illiteracy, ignorance, and desperation, but greed also. Anybody that falls for one of these scams has had numerous opportunities in their life to protect themselves from it, either by getting an education or by not letting their greed overtake their common sense.
Not sure why that would be so. If I recieve about 10 million USD in my account and move 8m of those into another; and then pay income tax on the 2m, would I not be ok?
A concern could exist in case the money in question was involved in funding nefarious activities, but that's not always the case with the story presented by these people
It's still money laundering, I believe. Remember, possibly laundered money, like possible drug money, is guilty until proven innocent, and since they sometimes literally bring cases against the money rather than any person, there's little pretense of upholding the money holder's (whether they're legally the "owner" is often at question and depends on jurisdiction) rights.
The scam uses email, so there is a very low cost to send. Newspapers have estimated that good scammers can get a response rate of .1% to .2%, which is pretty low.
And some people have this expectation that they can get rich quickly with little work. I know people like that. So breaking a law in a way that doesn't appear to hurt anyone just helps convince those people that there is a good reason for being offered so much money for so little work.
