About twice a day it seems I get the same boring spam/scam about how I could make thousands of dollars by helping Nigerians transfer money out of that country. This is a long-running scam that predates the Internet and has fooled victims literally around the world — including a U.S. Congressmen.
Former Congressmen Edward Mezvinsky was recently indicted for bilking people out of more than $10 million, partly in an attempt to cover losses he incurred after falling for the Nigerian money transfer scam. Mezvinsky was also involved in some other scams, including Ponzi schemes. The amusing part (except, I guess, for those out the $10 million), is that while Mezvinksy was busy scamming other people with Ponzi schemes, he himself fell for the Nigerian money scam.
But, of course, this is America and so Mezvinksy’s lawyers have a ready defense for him — he was legally insane, they claim, at the time he committed his illegal acts. In fact Mezvinsky recently sued pharmaceutical company Roche AG claiming that its anti-malarial drug, Lariam, was really responsible for all of Mezvinsky’s problems. According to his lawsuit, “As a result of the psychiatric syndrome caused by his long-term use of Lariam, he invested rashly in bad investments . . .[and] depleted his own financial resources, his wife’s financial resources, as well as his wife’s inheritance.”