Why do scammers scam?

[DodoriousMaximus]

They just want to make easy money in the little amount of time possible.

[ensurance982]

Easy. It's much easier to pull of a scam than really work for your money. The amount of work needed to scam people is lower than just staying legit and earning your BTC the hard way. People are greedy, maybe even in dire need of money, and therefore do anything to get access to it. Also all those fancy IPOs and their business models are mostly crap and will never work out to begin with!

[griffinriz]

They want to get rich fast and dont want to work.

[BigMac]

They want that nice quick money.

But why not just work hard for that money legitimately rather than work hard at scamming immorally someone for pittance?

Scamming is always much easier then legitimate work. If not, scammer wouldn't scam..

Is it? To successful scam you have to put in usually several hours work, whether that';s building up your rep or actually closing the scam. You could spend that time better building up your account to use for legit purposes like a sig deal or other ways to make money on here.

Unfortunately, sometimes, careless people fell for cheap scams.
For example, someone impersonated theymos and sent a few emails out, and scammed 11.95 btc. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=665923.0

[jaelrahab]

becouse they want money very fast and simple

[Omikifuse]

Some people only have the ability to convince others they have an idea worth investing, but not have good ideas and make they come true.

Also the anonimity factor, you can scam using an alt ID while you remain being an honorable member of the Bitcoin comunity. Plus it will be unlikely you'll get arrested or something, because the Bitcoin comunity values anonimity.

Then no social punishment + no law punishiment = scammer's paradise

[nicepumper]

They want easy quick money, no one likes working hard, specially as boat missers.

[Armed]

They want to get rich fast and dont want to work.

Many scams require more work than regular work.

[littlewizard]

They want to get money while they don't want to work hard.
Sad to see those scammers, I lost some coins in sharex exchange, luckily not much.

[FlyForFun]

They want to get rich fast and dont want to work.

Many scams require more work than regular work.

Nah, I think scams require less work. Look at the hardware thread, selling fake ASIC.

[SamGesign]

Simple thinking! They want your money. Scammers always use different and new tricks to gain money. They will give attractive and unbelievable offers and will aim to convince you. If you have a feeling that something is wrong, you're possibly right.

[gigEls]

For profit, simple.

[BitsBitsBits]

When it would be more profitable to stay legitimate instead?

For example there was Stackcoin. Its dev had an IPO that raised 70 BTC. It had an interesting idea and screenshots were posted showing the concept being developed. Wouldn't it have been more profitable to just develop the coin instead?

Or the Sharexcoin exchange. A lot of development went into that site and the site was a fully functioning exchange which would have been a good long term investment for the site owner. But instead the owner decided to scam its users by closing the site and running off with its users' coins. I think he was later caught trying to sell 24 million QORA on Poloniex which they were able to identify and seize.

It doesn't make any sense.

What surprises me most is how dumb that scammer must've been trying to sell that many coins at once. He is fully anonymous, no one will be able to track him down, yet he decides to get busted on a small exchange trying to sell millions of coins? lol.. What a dumbass.

[redsn0w]

I can do the same question , but on the contrary :

Code:

Why do people not scam ? 

 I think the answer is : beacuse scam isn't right . But few people think : scam is right .

What do you think about my question ?

[yunkie]

Because working is a scam, so they want to scam other people anyway. Everything is a scam 

[giveBTCpls]

It's pretty simple. Time is money. Scammers know this, scammers are low inhibition, and have little morals, so they will do anything that it takes to stick to that motto, aka big money in little time as possible.

[Joerii]

Hard to explain a sociopath, really. I think there is probably some literature out there on it, though, by psychiatrists and such. I would start there.

I happen to work in a psychiatric hospital. There's sociopaths and psychopaths. Psychopaths are born that way, while sociopaths have personality disorders.

One characteristic they share is the lack of empathy for other people. Sure, they can tell they are hurting others but they don't feel their pain. They will see their victims of deserving to be ripped off because they are stupid. They don't feel bad at all. Without empathy, the biggest crimes that pay the most and are easiest to execute are simply the most efficient way of making money.

Why work if you can steal ? Purely logically and purely selfishly it makes total sense.

These are sick people. Arguing morality with them is completely futile. 

[mrhelpful]

Because its easy to do lol.

[311]

They want to get rich fast and dont want to work.

Many scams require more work than regular work.

Nah, I think scams require less work. Look at the hardware thread, selling fake ASIC.

Even trying to sell fake things still requires work to fabricate the listing then try successfully scam. Most scams fail several times before they manage a scam that's if they even manage to pull it off. Just think of all that time wasted where they could have been earning some other way.

[jambola2]

They want that nice quick money.

But why not just work hard for that money legitimately rather than work hard at scamming immorally someone for pittance?

Scamming is always much easier then legitimate work. If not, scammer wouldn't scam..

Is it? To successful scam you have to put in usually several hours work, whether that';s building up your rep or actually closing the scam. You could spend that time better building up your account to use for legit purposes like a sig deal or other ways to make money on here.

The OP was talking about big scams, for which a sig deal doesn't make much of a difference.

Even with small scams, why would the scammer care ? Why spend time posting when you can just make a new account and scam again ?

You cannot stop scamming by delving into the scammer's mind, just by being more careful with what you trade.