Scamming is not remotely a hare-brained scheme. It's an incredibly reliable method for getting rich by exploiting the gullible if you know how to do it. That "if" is a huge if. And there's the whole ethics thing.
And gullible needs to be emphasized. A lot of people seem to think scammers only get the greedy, which is not true. For example, how are fake charities targeting the greedy? Or the grandparent scam? [1]
