The N&O reports that “Duke University police are warning workers about an email scam that lures them with the prospect of a 2.5 percent raise so they will send their banking information to a Russian Internet address.”
A sidebar offers readers a “Moral Guide to Pay-Raise Scams,” which includes the following helpful note:
The only appropriate and moral pay-raise scam is one that lures workers into walking off their jobs in protest to demand the government make their employers give them a raise worth, in some cases, over 100 percent.
Workers interested in this lure are asked to contact their local religion-draped morality scold for details of how they can be used as political props to boost his media appearances, the automated cashier industry, and their own future unemployment prospects.”
OK, so obviously I made the sidebar stuff up. Granted, it could be inferred from the N&O’s cheerleading of the protest aspect of the moral pay-raise scam, but with respect to its economics the paper is apparently among the gulled.