I cannot accept this as a good explanation of human psychology. It's a plausible hypothesis but is it true?
In a simple analysis, yes. Not in the complete profile perhaps, I don't know the "victim" to profile him. Would need to contrast one on the other. But this guy typifies more for victim than scammer.
I started to study scams since a friend, female, went down on a Romance Scam (yup... I got amazed too, but found out females are more likely to be targets on this sort of scam than males - and they call us sex-addicts
) some years ago. From there to study all the variants, Romance are a 419 variation, profiles of scammers (normally they like to look like victims of something, makes it easier for the target to drop defenses) and so on
A past roomate of mine was the "real deal". One of those charming guys, who knows everyone. What I realized from him was, he seemed like a really amazing liar. He had lied to everyone about every thing, he could keep it straight. He claimed to be going to school and, while the school never heard of him, he could rattle off his course load to you at any point, and he was right for the school. That sort of liar.
The thing was, it was less that he was a great liar, more that... you WANT to believe him. Its just natural to assume that people are telling you the truth, or at least, an exaggerated version of it, or their side of the story. Nobody expects that people are looking them in the face and fabricating everything.
When he skipped town (owing me 3k for rent and the phone bill, $900 of which was his calls, with the bill in my name), everyone was shocked but... not too shocked. Everyone had something that "wasn't right" about him that they shrugged off.
The strangest part, after my friends and I ran his ass out of town (well out of the apartment... after a lawyer told me to cut my losses and going after him would yield nothing).,... he IM'd me a few weeks later. Starts telling me how its his birthday and how sad he is to not be around his friends.... as if nothing happened. He never admitted a thing, not when we sat him int he chair and told him this was his chance to come clean before he leaves, not weeks later from an unknown location on AIM.