Indian doctor duped into buying 'Aladdin's lamp' for $41,600

bbc.com

9 points·respinal··9 comments

I don’t want to encourage this type of commerce, but I find it hard to summon a ton of sympathy for the victim in this story.

It makes me doubt his competence as a doctor more than it evokes sympathy.

There is a lot of superstition in India.

It’s a ripe market for the right type of scams.

All these scams are moving online now. I'm getting email spam daily with all these kinds of offers. An average Indian would fall for these scams preying on superstitions.

> The doctor reportedly filed a complaint with local police in Meerut, western Uttar Pradesh, earlier this week.

Ok, I am not sure what is worse. Being so gullible to fall for it, or go to police to report it.

I would love to see how that convo went.

Also he did haggle for it

> ... for 15,000,000 Indian rupees ($201,200)

> but settled for a down payment of 33,10000 rupees ($41,584).

that is such uneven price that this was multistage negotiation, for a lamp that will give you infinite wealth.

Well its a good article to start a monday.

Would this be illegal if done in the US?

I mean nobody can prove that lamp doesn't give good fortunes after all...

I would have to think so, since the one guy dressed up and pretended to be the genie and they probably claimed he lived in the lamp, etc?

The lamp was sold after demonstrating it really brought out a Genie.

who would sell that kind of thing?

To give back to the community.

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