Those Lucky Scammers

When I read about the epic scams pulled off by the psychopathic lot, I start thinking about just how such schemes are hatched and how I would do one better. On hindsight, each of the schemes seems just so amazingly well crafted and could've only been the work of a genius mind. Yet, as one who does project development for a living and having a basic understanding of fundamental attribution error, I question that first impression.

Firstly, no idea is born out of nothing. Typically, someone starts off with a seed of the idea, and it is slowly built up layer by layer. Most ideas fail along the way and collapse, while others somehow manage to build up till they're mature. It's these mature ideas that come across as brilliant and it's easy to assume that it was designed that way from the start. I suspect it's simply that we only really hear about the brilliantly executed ones and miss the minor ones that simply result in police reports and arrests of small-time crooks.

And then there's the luck factor, where one simply manages to escape discovery for long enough that the scam can actually mature. Sometimes accounting fraud gets discovered early, and then its nipped in the bud. Other times it manages to turn into Enron. However, I have my doubts that Enron started off as a scam, but rather as an operation that was conducive to a profitable scam and it basically grew from there. It's very tempting to overestimate the skill involved, but like with any business I just think it's the matter of being in the right place at the right time.

The magic piece of the puzzle is actually the psychopathic impulsiveness. Lady Luck loves a gambler: If you don't even try, you'd never have a chance of striking the lottery. If the seed of a scam idea should show up, it takes a risk taker to even consider trying it out. Someone who's too honest or too hesitant would'nt even think of trying in the first place. It's the iterations that come after that make the idea really work. Basically, when all of the above come together at once, one has the makings of a scam of epic proportions.