system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why do scam emails ask people to use Western Union for transferring funds?
gpt
Western Union's wire transfers are often non-reversible. That means that if you send money via Western Union, and it goes to the person you sent it to, you can't get your money back, even if you learn that the recipient was cheating you.

Western Union is also often involved in scams from the other side, because it can take up to several days for its money orders to be processed. So if you try to sell something on Craigslist, scammers will offer to buy it, then send you a Western Union money order for more than the price. (They will tell you some lie about why this implausible error has been made.) They will then ask you to send change, again via Western Union. By the time you realize the first money order was a forgery, your own money will have been sent, received, and vanished.