There was a piece in the Times of India Pune edition yesterday about a woman who has lost about 40 lakh rupees to a conman. Recently widowed, her daughter encouraged her to consider matrimonial sites. Online, she met a man claiming to be from London who told her a couple of weeks into the relationship that he had sent her a package with gifts and a surprise. Enter Priyanka from Delhi who called her to advise her of the arrival of the package and that she needed to pay Rs 15000 towards customs duty. You know how the rest pans out.
While we were discussing this story at home, I heard another story about a man conned by a 'tantrik' who promised to cure his cancer. All he had to do was fund the tantrik's various exercises which naturally got ever more elaborate. I have been wondering if there is a difference between these two cases. Would we call the woman gullible, but forgive the man his desperation?
There are a number of people who, in the course of business trust their customers and end up losing surprisingly large sums of money. I personally know someone, who used to do business with a liquor baron who had started a new venture in the transportation business. After a few years of paying this young businessman, the liquor baron, one day stopped paying all his vendors. Like most hopeful businessmen, this young man continued to provide services to the transportation company, spending good money after bad, until one fine day, he realized that he was being duped.
Since I know this businessman extremely well and know him to be a fairly intelligent, prudent and sane person, I have been unwilling to label him gullible. Yet, is there really a difference between his case and the two stories listed above? Is this person as gullible as the people who fall for honey traps and the Nigerian inheritance scams? Is there really a difference between the scams on one side and losses in the course of regular business on the other, or is it just a difference in degree of gullibility?
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