Photo: Alamy

If you follow my blog, you’ll know it has become somewhat of a warning beacon against scams and frauds, which little crusade began after my own mother was scammed by cross-border fraudsters out of a large chunk of her savings.

Here, however, is an interesting article from The Guardian entitled “How I Talked a Scammer Into a Better Life Choice.”

Written by Amanda Willis, it describes her conversation with a Pakistan-based boiler-room worker who was trying to get her to download malware. The results were encouraging, and worthy of being shared. Her entire essay is definitely worth a read.

The tagline of the article is “Getting angry with fraudsters dehumanises them, but if we engage them in conversation we might be surprised by the results.”

Unfortunately, many scammers who are directly involved in criminal enterprises become frighteningly abusive when confronted with their scam, and I’m not sure I want to get involved with inviting that sort of negative energy into my life. But the principle at work here is the one found in Proverbs 25:21-22:

If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward thee.

The Old Wolf has spoken