No sympathy for this devil.

We all like to think we’re immune to scams and con artists around the world, but you never can tell when they’ll come for you and in what way. Everyone knows to be wary of Nigerian princes and sudden calls from family members who don’t quite sound right, but sometimes scams strike in the form that you least suspect, like the tightly pantsed octogenarian Mick Jagger.

It all started last December when the victim, a woman in her 50s living in Aomori Prefecture found an account on Facebook that appeared to belong to Jagger and innocently left a comment on it. About a month later she got a reply from another account claiming to be his manager, Yvonne Meyer.

Unfortunately, the woman didn’t do a background check, because a quick Google search reveals that Jagger’s manager is listed as Joyce Smith and that despite there being over 100 women named “Yvonne Meyer” on LinkedIn, none claim to have any dealings with Jagger.

After some initial back and forth between the two, Meyer offered the woman a type of membership-based service in which fans send money to Mick Jagger, who then multiplies it and sends it back to them. This service was offered in two tiers: one in which an investment of US$700 would yield $290,000 or the “VIP course” which would turn $4,000 into $1.1 million. The woman selected the cheaper one.

She began with making two bank transfers to a personal account which totaled 19,000 yen (US$127). Then, in the latter half of February, she made 10 purchases of electronic money totaling 101,500 yen (US$677) at convenience stores, likely through prepaid cards or cryptocurrency whose codes she sent to Meyer via Facebook Messenger.

The woman’s final message from Meyer informed her that she would have to make another payment in order to receive her earnings that Mick Jagger had generated. However, soon after that all communication ceased. The woman turned to her family for advice and was convinced by them that she was the victim of fraud.

She then went to the police, who are treating this as a romance scam and investigating the matter. However, given the anonymity of social media and method through which she sent the money it will be difficult to track them down, especially since they’re very likely not in Japan to begin with.

It’s safe to say that the moral of this story is to always talk to your family and friends about things. We can all get caught off guard or in a certain state of mind that makes us more susceptible to scams, so getting an outside perspective can be really important before making decisions with money. And speaking of outside perspectives, here’s what people online had to say about the incident.

“I’m glad she didn’t lose too much money, but it’s a little ridiculous. Are these small-amount scams on the rise?”
“A lot of important people don’t have official accounts but I’m sure Mick Jagger’s manager would.”
“I would love if the real Mick himself scammed me. I’m a huge Stones fan.”
“I would rather let Keith manage my money.”
“How do you get lured by that?”

As the one comment alluded to, the fact that the woman was asked to make relatively small payments of less than 10,000 yen at a time probably made her more willing to take the risk. When you think about it, the odds of her money actually having gone to Mick Jagger who would then somehow use the power of rock & roll to leverage it into even more money were still probably better than winning the lottery.

Source: To-O Nippo, News NNN, To-o Nppo Press via Yahoo! News
Featured image: Wikipedia/Bert Verhoeff
Insert image: Pakutaso
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