Albany mayoral candidate Kirk Smith has apparently just stumbled upon a massive conspiracy to defraud Americans of money. In fact, he told WALB that he’s investigated it himself by playing along until they eventually demanded $5,000. Apparently, the initial email claimed to be from the South African government and would give him $9 million for his help in getting $30 million out of the country.
I’m glad he’s just “investigated” something that most of the internet world has dealt with for years. The infamous 419 scam.
What Smith apparently didn’t realize is that his “investigation” is hardly new. My first encounter with the 419 scam was about nine years ago, and my “investigation” was probably the exact same as Smith’s. I went along with it because of the riches it promised. I knew there had to be a catch, and when they started asking for money, it was pretty easy to figure out it was a scam. Unfortunately, many people do actually get taken by these every year.
What strikes me as funny is how someone who wants to be mayor of a city like Albany thinks that he’s discovered something new. This scam, in various forms, has been around since the 1980′s. For 30 years now, these people have been pounding away at Americans in hopes of getting money for nothing. The prevalence of these scams is truly mind boggling.
Smith claims he’s been in contact with South African officials, which sounds great. Unfortunately, South Africa probably had nothing to do with this one. Google searches would eventually reveal that these scams come primarily from Nigeria, and not the countries the emails claim. In fact, common sense has a tendency to tell you that if they’re not telling the truth about the money, then they’re might not be telling the truth about who they are or where they’re from.
As for his mention to WALB that he hopes to speak to members of Congress about this type of thing, it’s already illegal in this country and in Nigeria. There’s only so much any law enforcement can do.
That said, Smith does bring up some very valid things about the 419 scams. Elderly are particularly vulnerable since they are typically less internet savvy than younger people, plus many have a retirement account where they can access larger quantities of cash than most can. It’s important that we all look out for family members who are on the internet for the first time and let them know that the old adage “if it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.”
Unfortunately, this sounds like an attempt to help build name recognition prior to the election next year. Sorry Mr. Smith. You’ll have to do better than that.
According to WFXL’s report, a female friend/relative of Mr. Smith was the one who received the e-mail. She was er…uh… naive (could I say stupid?) enough to believe it, and she asked to borrow $5000 from Mr. Smith so she could invest it… If he felt the need to make this stupidity public knowledge (like nobody’s ever heard of such??), then I might question his judgement when it comes to Albany’s business.
Smith taking this to the press screamed of someone running for office trying to gain relevance in this town. 419 scams are nothing new, and to act like this is a new thing is both sad and amusing to me. Frankly, we need competent people in elected office, and while I don’t think Mayor Adams is particularly competent as mayor, Mr. Smith blew his chances right there with a lot of people.
That’s like holding a press conference tonight to announce that you’ve discovered we have an economic crisis currently and you’ve spoken with the electronics manufacturers about it. One, it ain’t new and two, it ain’t the electronics companies that are involved.
Hmmm. I hope Smith doesn’t really think he has done something great. If he does, we can kiss him goodbye as a mayoral candidate even sooner. Seems this is prima facie evidence that his grip on issues of importance is, shall we say, seriously lacking.
Even though Albany has been known to elect “lackers” who don’t have a “grip” on much of anything, don’t expect Mr. Smith to be going to Washington–or City Hall in this case.