I'm on the Highway to (Phone) Hell...

[apocolypse101]

Wow. Thanks for all the information, everyone.

[Mental_Mouse]

Scam PSA at greater length.

I've heard tell (it may even have been mentioned earlier in this thread; I'm pretty sure I saw it mentioned on this site in a thread somewhere somewhat recently), that the bad grammar in those spam/phishing emails is intentional. [...]

That was me, at least most recently. Even more than the narrow groups you mention, they're looking for people who have "compromised judgement":

• Elderly folks who are "losing it" to senility (one of the most common, and most tragic, cases).
• Kids too young to know better.
• Uneducated poor folks who will desperately clutch at any promise of riches no matter how unlikely the source (see also: Multi-Level Marketing, scams in general).
• Habitually drunken or drug-addled people (often overlapping with "poor and desperate").
• Some types of mental illness: for example, paranoids are surprisingly vulnerable, because they won't trust anyone who tries to correct them; likewise any condition with grandiosity or inflated ego will be sure they couldn't possibly be scammed (see below), and if they were they wouldn't admit it nohow.
• A few folks who naturally "don't have the sense God gave a goose". Not necessarily the same as having a low IQ.
• People who are physically sick in a way that affects their judgement (e.g., delirium)
• People who need money Right Now: Medical treatment, house fire, lost the job that supported their high-flying lifestyle...
• Sometimes even the desperately horny (porn or porngame ads).
• Folks who want to be a "movie star", to get their book published, get elected, or some similar goal, and don't actually know how those things work.
• And so on... desperation in general is a biggie, at long as the con-artist can figure out what the person is desperate for.

The thing is, anyone can fall for "the right con at the right time". No exceptions -- for me, it was a dating service, while I was a Harvard undergrad with little money, no car, and (as it turned out) an undiagnosed autistic-spectrum disorder. If you really think you're immune, a good con artist can use that certainty against you.

People who are merely ignorant, or got hit at a vulnerable moment or with the one line that gets past their defenses... those might reply to the original letter, maybe even send one or two rounds of money. That's a decent win for the con artist, who's putting no money and not much effort into an online scam. But those victims will get a clue eventually, especially if they have people around them who can say "it's a trap!" (and who they'll believe). Banks and credit-card companies also look for scamlike patterns among their customers and are known to intervene as well.

Online scams do have the vulnerability that most victims will get at least a little time to think between rounds. In contrast, for a carny game or such, the carny can keep the pressure and distraction going in person; in a cult or MLM scheme they can muster a friendly crowd to keep the victim "in the fold".

On the other hand, if a con-artist (especially online) gets hold of someone who's really not of sound mind, well that's their jackpot -- and those are the really nasty cases. The scammer can drain the victim's savings... then convince them to max their credit cards, dip into their IRA and their kids' college funds, take loans against their house, sell their possessions, and maybe even recruit more victims in their old-age home or whatever. And for an online scam, the perp is likely to be out of reach and out of jurisdiction for anyone trying to come after them, not to mention operating under a disposable identity.