> It just sits there telling me I'm practically a criminal
I mean, you bought stolen goods. The law says you are culpable to some degree. If this was a legit sale, the original owner would be willing to do what's needed to make it useable.
While I understand the sentiment, we sure are softies when we sympathize with the guy who got in trouble for trying to scam us. He earned that consequence 100%.
> The thing that pained her the most was the shame of having been scammed.
I've fallen victim to a scammer as well (paid rent to a "landlord" who it turns out didn't actually own the place). It sucks, but I don't think it's something to be ashamed of. Our society is built on trust, and some people exploit that.
>Have some empathy, man. If you owned a company and hired someone, but the person who showed up isn't the same person, the word "fraud" is wholly appropriate and I feel bad for Op.
Fraud? Sure.
But feeling bad for the person exploiting the value of one persons labor because they didn't get to exploit someone elses labor for more instead is fuckin nuts.
>Gee, I hope that everything you own that you got off Craigslist in good faith and paid for is remotely disabled if it had been stolen, while the thieves enjoy the money. Because you're the bad guy!
You're not the bad guy, but you're also not entitled to keep the stolen goods. It has to go back to its original owner. I'd be pretty pissed if someone stole my bike, sold it, and I'm not able to recover my bike because somebody "bought" it at 80% off.
I had a friend who was moving country and wanted to sell his Porche. Someone offered to buy it for a reasonable price, but wanted to pay cash. My friend thought that sounded really dodgy; so he agreed on the condition that they both physically go to a bank teller and have the bank teller deposit the money in his account as he watched. The other guy agreed; so that's what they did. He showed up with a giant bag full of bills, just like the big drug deals in the movies. At that point my friend felt he'd done his duty, and that anything dodgy to be Somebody Else's Problem to detect / deal with.
Afterwards I heard that Travelers prefer dealing in cash; so there wasn't necessarily anything dodgy going on (other than presumably the general effort to avoid scrutiny).
Happened at a company I worked at many years ago. Working from home was new, one dude who we all thought was suspect anyway got a call from his bosses boss and answered the phone with the wrong company name and it was over.
To make an example of him they made him pay back some of his salary (his contract had him on call and available 24/7). Ran into him a while later and he confirmed he paid them back.
> The guy has a strong sense of ethics. I continue to be impressed.
That seems to be the case in general, but I have to say in this case it doesn’t really require that to decide to take the opportunity to slam dunk on someone when you discover you’ve been scammed into agreeing to be a speaker for their scam. A fairly normal degree of personal desire for retaliation would suffice.
> I actually find SBF quite charming and persuasive.
I genuinely find that fascinating, because from the first I ever saw or heard him (before the FTX stuff erupted), my reaction was the exact opposite. My most charitable reaction was that he was a scammer.
Were you cheated? Probably not. But the guy was definitely on a sleaziness spectrum.
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