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March 2, 2006

EMAIL Hell - Psychiatrist Diagnoses Reagan as an Idiot, then Falls for Nigerian EMAIL Scam

Okay, so maybe there are still people stupid enough to fall for EMAIL scams. According to court papers filed by his son, psychiatrist Louis Gottschalk has lost as much as $3 million over a 10-year period to a Nigerian EMAIL scam.

Gottschalk gained international acclaim in 1987 with a study purporting to prove that Ronald Reagan showed signs of diminished mental capacity in the 1980 and 1984 Presidential debates. This coincidence suggests that there is indeed a God and he has a cat-like sense of humor.

In 1995, when Gottschalk first began to correspond with the scammers, most people thought the term spam referred to a pork product, and Internet access was sold by the minute, so email advertising was much more costly than it is now. Bruce was trying to build a popular web site without the help of a cat, and in one of his articles he discussed a letter he had received from someone in Nigeria asking for help. Bruce pointed out that the letter was obviously a fraud, since somebody legitimately looking to launder money looted from a Third World Country would be going straight to the Clinton Administration. Like most people in those days, Gottschalk did not know about Bruce's web site, and as a result he was unprepared.

Once you're hooked by a scam, it is psychologically very difficult to pull out. If you do, you're saying the money you've spent so far will never come back. So, Gottschalk's behaviour is not as stupid as it sounds. When he was first hooked, it is perfectly reasonable to believe he was unaware of the scam. Once he was in, he couldn't allow himself to admit he'd been scammed because of the damage it would do to his self-image.

Still, Gottschalk is now facing a serious problem, because the money he invested in the scam belonged to a family trust. Last October, Gottschalk's son tried to have the man removed from the management of the trust, but a court refused to find Gottschalk incompetent, and the bleeding continues. The son is not going to relent.

So don't let this happen to you. Before you invest in a scheme transmitted via EMAIL, talk to your cat. If your cat is not familiar with the scam, talk to me. The last thing you want to do is look as dumb as the guy who proved that Reagan didn't know what he was doing.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

# At Thu 6:07 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (2) | More EMAIL Hell

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Comments

Posted by: The MaryHunter at March 2, 2006 9:15 PM

Posted by: cfomahm at March 5, 2006 1:17 PM