A little light relief away from the serious business of NAMA – the National Consumer Agency is using today -April Fool’s Day – to warn us of the dangers of scams and cons, telling us that 76% of Irish people have been targeted and indeed 18% have fallen victim to scams such as
pyramid selling schemes (I don’t think they’re talking about cemeteries in Rathangan or bottle factories in Ringsend )
foreign lotteries (I don’t think they’re talking about Bulgarian or Cape Verde apartment developments)
chain letters (I don’t think they’re talking about offers of 125% mortgages)
A spokesperson for the Agency repeated the mantra “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is”. The Agency does not reveal the average cost of scams. But to use one blogger’s credible estimates of the cost of rescuing our property-based banking system, the cost for each of the 4,459,300 souls in the State last April 2009 is between €5-10,000. Similar estimates have been aired by politicians.
(The above is for entertainment purposes only. Any resemblance between scams and what has taken place in Ireland’s property or banking sector in the last decade is unintentional and co-incidental.)
NAMA Wine Lake 