I can't wait to hear how this American guy ended up working with the Nigerian scammers. Nothing in the online reporting so far. I like to imagine he was himself a victim and then impressed the scammers with his intelligence and ability to help them conduct further scams.
Often times, they are indeed victims themselves. When they've been wrung completely dry of literally hundreds of thousands of dollars and they are in such a deep hole they can't see a way out, the scammer will then ask them to assist in forwarding money. They are patsies, pure and simple.
Other times people will just be recruited for a work-from-home job as a "remailer", which again involves acting as a proxy for payments, cheques or physical goods and shipping them off to the scammer.
I can assure you of one thing. He didn't impress any scammers with his intelligence, the opposite in fact. They (the actual scammers) need people who do what they are told without questioning it too much.
They're even targeting kids here in Britain. Gangs post pictures on social media of huge wads of cash, then tell the kids that all they need to do is move a bank transfer.
And suddenly you've duped a dopey 14-year-old into money laundering.
I'm assuming that he's a 67yo guy who is running out of money and doesn't want to be a homeless senior citizen, which occurs surprisingly often in the US. Desperation is a hell of a motivator, and I'm willing to predict that he uses a public defender.
