Max Sawicky has been getting the same “My-father-was-the-oil-minister-of-Nigeria-before-they-shot-him-and-I-need-your help-to-regain-what-he-stole” spam emails I get every day. (You may remember Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s categorization of this as a variant of the “Spanish Prisoner” in a fascinating taxonomy of basic frauds.) But Max has run into an especially tricky example, one that has fooled tens of millions of people.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman