Scam Du Jour

...even though it's been going on for years.

Now that we have a grifter in charge of things, it's getting worse.

RawStory:

Some supporters of President Donald Trump are being manipulated by scammers into investing in the Iraqi dinar based on the false premise that the president predicted its value would soar in the coming years.

As the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer reports, scammers who have been promoting the Iraqi dinar as an investment vehicle have been telling Trump supporters that the president and the Iraqi government are conducting negotiations to “revalue” the currency that each dinar is worth three-to-four times the amount of the United States dollar.

This would be a massive boost in the currencies valuation, which now has a value of less than $0.001 for every US dollar.

North Carolina Trump supporter Hayes Kotseos says she became convinced that Trump would raise the value of the dinar after seeing a video clip of the president in 2017 where he vaguely said that all currencies would soon “be on a level playing field.”

“I love my president, and I was like, ‘Oh my God,'” Kotseos tells the Daily Beast of her reaction to the video.

Afterward, she and her husband invested thousands of dollars in Iraqi dinars on the hopes that Trump’s deal-making prowess would soon make them instant millionaires.

Kotseos isn’t alone either: Sommer has found that “court papers related to dinar scams often mention millions of dollars worth of dinar purchases” and that “dinar holders regularly tweet at Trump and various Iraqi government Twitter accounts, demanding to know when they’ll finally enact the ‘RV’ that will let the money flow in.”

Will Sommer at The Daily Beast

The currency is nearly worthless outside of Iraq, but Kotseos bought millions of dinars in April, after watching a video of President Trump at a 2017 press conference. In the clip, Trump says, with characteristic vagueness, that all currencies will soon “be on a level playing field.”

In reality, Trump was talking about trade imbalances with China. But like other Trump supporters who have fallen into the dinar investment scam, which has existed since at least 2012, Kotseos interpreted Trump’s rambling statement as proof that the Iraqi dinar would soon be worth as much or even more than the dollar, making anyone who had been smart enough to buy in early a millionaire.

Her shirt says it all. She can't be both at the same time.

And that's the key.

Once I've convinced the rubes to accept the oxymoron, and internalize its contradiction, they'll believe anything I say and do whatever I ask.