Saturday, July 20, 2013

How I lost $1,350 by falling for the same Internet scam twice in one week...

In the summer of 2007, with no job to speak of and no prospects on the horizon, I decided that America was chafing me and it was time to leave the country. I resolved to spend July and August in Italy, a country that seemed like it would look much more kindly on my lackluster work ethic and my burgeoning alcoholism. No matter that the balance of my savings account was lower than my SAT score. I would go to Europe—and I would go there in style.

That’s not all. Somehow I got the idea that I'd travel to Italy in business class—lie-flat beds! Complimentary newspapers! All the Kir Royales I could drink!—and, what’s more, that I’d do so at a discount. Full-fare business-class tickets cost several thousand dollars more than I had to spend. But, God knows why, I figured I could get one for a fraction of its true cost. This idea excited me very much, and I became irrationally confident that I could successfully beat the system. “Paying full price is for suckers,” I informed my friends. “I can find a better way.” As suckers do, I put my trust in the Internet.

Now, I didn't really expect to find cheap business-class fares for sale online. (I was delusional, not crazy.) My plan, instead, was to buy a bunch of frequent flier miles and exchange them for a round-trip ticket. So I searched Craigslist and found some miles for sale. They were offered by someone who claimed to be an airline pilot named Capt. Chris Hansen. He said he had more miles than he knew what to do with, miles that he would never use because he was always traveling for business.

Capt. Chris responded to my email. He also called me on the telephone, where we talked for several minutes about the airline industry and the relative merits of various airplanes, a topic that he knew a lot about, and that I pretended to know a lot about. Our conversation convinced me that he was on the level. (As everyone knows, scam artists don’t use telephones.) After our talk I agreed to pay him $650 for 100,000 miles, which I immediately sent via PayPal. Full story...

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