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How is it worth it for someone to put in months of time for this small amount of money?
Sometimes they get tens of thousands, like if they convince the person to invest in a fraudulent investment scheme. Also, it's not fulltime work with one person... maybe an hour or a few a day per victim, and they do several at once. Reply to one person, reply to another one while waiting to hear back, reply to another... and sometimes the people doing the 'work' are merely employees working for a wage or percentage! If they're in a country with a different scale of currency like China, Brazil or Moldova, 10,000 USD would go a lot farther than in the US.
Anyway, it's not theoretical. Check out this Wired article for instance, or one on ProPublica. They're basically the same as the "I'm a lonely doctor in the military in Africa" romance scams that have been going around social media for years, somewhat descendants of the famous Nigerian Prince scams.
I just realized these scammers probably have CRM software.
Just thinking back to my last sales job. I was selling stuff at about $20k per sale, and my process was typically four or so 2-hour meetings with them.
My system was all paper, but that’s just because my company sucked at providing the resources we needed. Each prospect had a paper file, and I’d track each conversation. Then on the computer I had emails and files from each person separated out, and tasks to remind me to follow up.
I just realized that, in terms of personal organization, being a scammer is identical to a sales job.
The USD goes a long way in a lot of countries and these can by no means by small amounts of money. The youtuber Kitboga does a lot of videos exposing these scammers. They usually have a few different marks going at a time and, once the relationship is built up, can receive hundreds of dollars a week, steady, indefinitely
Thousands in a country where the wage is like 50 bucks per month is a lot.
Thousands isn't a small amount, especially if the exaggerating rate is good.
In addition to the other resources people have linked if you are interested in learning more about this type of scam take a listen to
Darknet Diaries episode 141: The Pig Butcher, it is very interesting.
If it is a scam, they likely have many different people on the hook at any one time, possibly dozens if their systems are sophisticated enough. They could be bringing in quite a hefty sum in total.