The entire scheme is based on the scammers avoiding baiting people who will catch on to the scheme (hence the obvious signs of scammage -- they're a reverse intelligence task), while snaring people who are likely to fall prey.
http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/study--obvious-nigeri...
This reduces their time cost, which is fairly high, as each mark must be navigated through the scam.
The ideal solution would be to create an AI which is sufficiently good to imitate a stupid, scammable individual, tarbaiting the scammers into wasting their time.
Isn't this true of almost everyone in society - whether it's jaywalking, or [minor] speeding, or not declaring income, or under-age drinking, or taking a sick day, or 'borrowing' a ream of paper from the office, or ...
My point I guess is that scamming people online doesn't seem to be a gateway to violent crime or anything like that??
Hopefully the scammer doesn't either, but hopefully this still conveys the point.
Edit: There's a difference too; jaywalking et al do not implicitly harm other people. I don't know all the legal intricacies, but theft (scams) is different.
Your Parent is insane to think that simply breaking rules means people have no ethics or morals themselves. Everyone is a dynamic person, and IMO someone who screws people within the confines of the law can be just as bad if not worse.
Everything could go badly, it's waste of life to worry about the insignificant / unlikely things.
It has nothing to do with fear per se, it has to do with risk. When you taunt some one, or some thing, you invoke an anger response in them. The thing is, you don't know what they are capable of when they are angry. So that is the risk.
I've reported dozens of Nigerian scammers in my day. Yahoo [1] used to have an email address for reporting them if they were using a Yahoo email account. I've also replied to them with a carbon copy to the FBI 419 abuse email address. I am even polite about it. It doesn't escalate the emotion.
Most scammers simply ignore you once you've reported them, occasionally they will swear at you and then ignore you. But it ends there.
[1] http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index;_ylt=AgcN27QhFLqwMA_Cfh52Fxl5...
Overall though, I think the danger is pretty low, assuming you do not reveal your identity at any point.