There are fax machines in the office I 'work' in on the weekend. I found a fax in one yesterday, with a story clipped from the Money section of USA Today, and notes scribbled on it. The 'story' was about vacations in Cancun, how people are flocking there, it being the hot spot, the place to be if you are in the know. At the very bottom there is a 1-800 number, and the scribbled notes have it circled, with legible notes penned, very neatly, as if faxed from a friend passing on good information. Of course the clip was a phony, newspapers simply do not put out 1-800 numbers for shit like this and pass it off as news. Not yet anyway. So of course I get on google and found this about it. The guy posted a picture of the very fax I found in the office.

There is a link in that blog that shows people discussing scam 1-800 numbers, and this one in particular. People actually fell for this, then talk about their experiences with trying to get out of it. One poster asks, "Why isn't this guy in jail by now from these illegal activities?" How fucking stupid do you have to be? They do sell vacation packages, the fax is a ploy to get people to buy more expensive vacations, and these people are pissed because they are still cheesy vacations and they wasted some money. I know, it's the viewpoint of an asshole, but I don't understand why people expect the government to protect them from their own stupidity. They aren't in jail because there probably isn't anything truly illegal about what they do, and they are still in business because they still have, obviously, many stupid people falling for it. It's similar to the phishing emails that are still prevalent. They must work, or they wouldn't be flooding my inbox all the time. It truly is difficult to understand how someone can imagine there is a dying public official in Africa that wants to give someone here in the States lots of money to facilitate a monetary transfer to a relative.