Sometimes it feels like people are just asking to be scammed. I can't remember where I read this, but I suspect that the saying that you can only scam a person if they are dishonest has more than a grain of truth to it. To that, we can also add that victims are likely to be – how can I say this without wounding sensibilities? – quite a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

I don't want to sound unsympathetic to those who do fall victim to some online scam or other because really, I do feel for them. But more often than not, before I actually start feeling sorry for them I also suffer an attack of most unladylike sniggering.

Take the latest scam that is doing the rounds: the Malta Bankers' Association issued a warning that people are being contacted by phone and advised that they are due a refund in bank charges. The catch – because, yes there always is a catch – is that you need to put forward a €100 payment before the refund can be affected.

Harrumph. I seriously hope that this statement was released more in the spirit of prevention, rather than because some nitwit has actually fallen for the scheme. How, in the name of everything whose IQ at least matches that of a cocker spaniel, does anyone actually fall victim to this sort of thing?

For starters, if you can quote one example in history since Shylock was unceremoniously told where to lump his interest when a bank offered cash refunds without being asked for them... well, then I'll eat my hat. The one I'm wearing in the photo, yes.

And if that is not enough to start the alarm bells ringing (the unlikelihood of spontaneous refunds, not the hat eating part) allow me to enlighten you: no genuine refund/inheritance/lottery requires you to actually pay money before you collect your prize.

Did I mention inheritance and lotteries? Herein we get to the "dishonest" part. You know perfectly well you don't have a long-lost uncle in Nigeria. And you also know that you didn't take part in any online lottery. Because if you did take part in any such lottery, then you fall right under my "stupidity" argument.

In short, those who suspend their disbelief for long enough to think that if they pass on their bank details a nice, fat cheque will be forthcoming, have only themselves to blame. That's where the "something for nothing" mentality will take you, down Scammed Road.

My disbelief also applies to those who, a couple of months back, fell victim to requests for money made by scammers who hacked a priest's email account. Fr Claude Portelli told the media how worried friends and acquaintances flooded his phone after receiving an email claiming that he had been mugged and was stranded in Spain without any money.

Because of course, if you're robbed at gunpoint your first instinct is to dash out to the public library and to send out an email to everyone in your address book. Really, how naive do you have to be to receive an email of the sort and act on it? I won't be too harsh because these actions were based on kindness and altruism, qualities that are not to be scoffed at.

But unfortunately, they were certainly not based on intelligence.

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