And this is an example of what I'm talking about.
There's $50,000 involved here. That's a largish sum, but it's nowhere near enough to prompt most people to abandon their entire lives, assume an alias, and live as a fugitive.
You may be "of the opinion" that this is a ruse, but your opinion is ill-informed and is clearly the result of partisan bias. You're not supposed to assume people guilty of heinous crimes without a very strong collection of evidence, and you don't have it.
Note that I'm not saying this isn't a ruse. It may be. But I doubt it, and I certainly don't have enough proof to declare it a fraud. Neither do you.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0527/050706_news_andy.php
This is from a few days back, it claims he was in the hospital on 5 July. Then again, it is a Seattle-based newspaper, which tends to sacrifice facts in the name of emotion.
If reports of his demise are not exaggerated, I'm certain we'll see an obituary in Seattle's daily paper or this one in due course.
How do you know its only 50K? That's the whole point. It could be $1 million as far as anyone knows.
So every time you get an email from a Nigerian guy you assume that it is true until you prove it isn't? Look, FR is not who raised the issue of the scamming. DU did, and they have every right to. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, usually its a duck. Maybe in this case it was not, but Andy's friends have nobody to blame but themselves for acting like crooks if they were not.