The law does not protect fraudsters

The crime of fraud requires the presence of the actus reus of seizing the money of others, and the mens rea of fraudulent means.

There is a story about a poor man in the United States who published an advertisement in a newspaper saying: If you want to become rich; Send one dollar to the following address. It seems that the advertisement used the desire to get rich quickly in the hearts of millions. Each one of them sent one dollar, and the man became a millionaire with just a two-line advertisement.

After the man became one of the richest people, he published another advertisement entitled “This is how you become rich,” in which he explained how he became rich. These millions of people realized that they had fallen victim to fraud, and they took the matter to court, but the judge did not find anything that could be used to condemn the man. He only took advantage of their naivety, and said the phrase that became one of the most famous phrases in history: “The law does not protect fools.”

Whether this incident occurred or not, it constitutes a crime of fraud in all laws of the world. For example, the Indian Penal Code specifies Article 420 to punish fraudsters, so much so that Indians began calling the fraudulent person “Jarsubis,” and “Jarsubis” means the number 420 in Hindi.

And that American man in the above-mentioned story is a fraudster under the law, as long as he created in people the hope of becoming wealthy, and abused them to hand over their money to him by this fraudulent means, regardless of the fact that they handed over their money to him by their own will, because their will was defective, because they were under The effect of deception.

More than that, laws provide additional protection for the heedless people in particular and aggravate the punishment for those who exploit their weak awareness. The intelligent, resourceful person has no great need for a law that protects his rights, while the law was created to protect the naive person, with weak awareness or even good intentions, contrary to what the phrase says. "The law does not protect the fools".

This phrase has a bad effect and is present in people’s minds all the time, and it may be one of the reasons for the spread of what is called “shrewdness” or “cleverness” among people, in their belief that it is skill and ability, and that this “clever” person is only exploiting his abilities, and he is not responsible for the naivety of those dealing with him. , when in reality he is a fraud or a fraud.

The difference between the fraudster and the deceiver is that the fraudster deceives to the extent that without his fraud, the contract or transaction would not have been concluded, such as someone who sells a car that does not exist, while the deceiver, his deceiving contributes to the conclusion of the contract or transaction, such as someone who sells his car after reducing the mileage meter.

The fraudster is punished criminally, and he goes to prison or pays a fine and registered in his criminal record, while the deceiver is sued civilly, his conduct can be invalidated, and he can be liable for compensation. God knows what the phrase “the law does not protect fools” has caused to people across generations. We, as human beings, are controlled by sayings that lay deep in our minds, and we rarely examine our assumptions.

God knows to what extent that phrase contributed to the reluctance of fraud victims to resort to the judiciary to recover their rights, or the extent of confidence that that phrase put in the minds of those who want to commit fraud as long as the law will not protect their stupid victims, which is the wrong belief that leads those who imagine themselves to be “clever" people to go to prison, only to be in fact dumber than their victims.

Written By:

Ahmed Amiri | Amiri Advocates & Legal Consultants