A financial-advice columnist falls for an elaborate scam
February 15, 2024 11:22 AM Subscribe
The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger
The man on the phone knew my home address, my Social Security number, the names of my family members, and that my 2-year-old son was playing in our living room. He told me my home was being watched, my laptop had been hacked, and we were in imminent danger. “I can help you, but only if you cooperate,” he said. His first orders: I could not tell anyone about our conversation, not even my spouse, or talk to the police or a lawyer.
Something very similar happened to a friend of mine who had a lot less money. Her husband managed to intervene five minutes before she was going to hand off the money.
Shortly after my mom died, someone called me claiming to be from my bank, saying something had gone wrong with my account. They started asking for some of my information and, thank goodness, the call dropped and when I called my bank they let me know no one had made that call. I felt very lucky.
I don't know how these people get their hooks in, but they do. If they catch you at the right moment, they can make you believe.
posted by rednikki at 11:37 AM on February 15 [17 favorites]
Shortly after my mom died, someone called me claiming to be from my bank, saying something had gone wrong with my account. They started asking for some of my information and, thank goodness, the call dropped and when I called my bank they let me know no one had made that call. I felt very lucky.
I don't know how these people get their hooks in, but they do. If they catch you at the right moment, they can make you believe.
posted by rednikki at 11:37 AM on February 15 [17 favorites]
It's so easy, sitting here at my desk reading that story, to spot a whole bunch of obvious tells that could have tipped her off that it was a scam. But in the moment, while you are scared and amped up, I don't know if I would spot the same things.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:42 AM on February 15 [34 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 11:42 AM on February 15 [34 favorites]
This is ... wow, pretty sophisticated for a cold-call setup. Although I can see certain tells from the early calls, none of us can say for sure that we wouldn't have thought that this time it was for real. Anyone can fall for it if they're caught by the right person in the right frame of mind. Scam artists are called artists for a reason.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:43 AM on February 15 [4 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 11:43 AM on February 15 [4 favorites]
When I was a kid someone broke into our home while we were on vacation. I remember the feeling of coming home and feeling so ill-at-ease and spooked by it. I can only imagine the level of violation I would feel if something like this happened to me (and I do think it can happen to anyone). My heart goes out to this woman and her family.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 11:49 AM on February 15 [8 favorites]
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 11:49 AM on February 15 [8 favorites]
My mom gets calls from "her grandson" and Microsoft all the time. Fortunately, in the grandson case at least, there are enough tells in the first sentence that she just laughs at them and hangs up.
posted by Spike Glee at 11:50 AM on February 15 [3 favorites]
posted by Spike Glee at 11:50 AM on February 15 [3 favorites]
I wonder if my credit union even has $50,000 in cash on site.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:55 AM on February 15 [15 favorites]
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:55 AM on February 15 [15 favorites]
I get “grandson” calls sometimes. I always say “Oh no! I guess I should wire you a million dollars immediately!” And then they hang up.
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:57 AM on February 15 [11 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:57 AM on February 15 [11 favorites]
I could have paid for over a year’s worth of child care up front.
Now that's depressing. This poor woman lost $50,000....and if she still had it, it would have been enough for...a year of child care for one toddler. I don't know about you, but if someone gave me a no-strings $50,000 right now, it would be life-altering, but that's because I don't have a child or a serious chronic medical condition - if I did, it would just be enough to help me struggle along.
But yeah, it's obviously a lot of stuff about tone of voice and pacing that makes this work, not just the dialogue as it's given in print. I'm sure there's a correct way to use tone and pacing to scam just about anyone.
I did once get one of those "there is a warrant for your arrest" scam calls where they are like "the police are on their way, only if you pay up now can we stop it", but very luckily I'd read about them a few weeks prior. It did make me feel weird and bad, though, even though I was 99.9% sure it was fraud.
posted by Frowner at 11:59 AM on February 15 [21 favorites]
Now that's depressing. This poor woman lost $50,000....and if she still had it, it would have been enough for...a year of child care for one toddler. I don't know about you, but if someone gave me a no-strings $50,000 right now, it would be life-altering, but that's because I don't have a child or a serious chronic medical condition - if I did, it would just be enough to help me struggle along.
But yeah, it's obviously a lot of stuff about tone of voice and pacing that makes this work, not just the dialogue as it's given in print. I'm sure there's a correct way to use tone and pacing to scam just about anyone.
I did once get one of those "there is a warrant for your arrest" scam calls where they are like "the police are on their way, only if you pay up now can we stop it", but very luckily I'd read about them a few weeks prior. It did make me feel weird and bad, though, even though I was 99.9% sure it was fraud.
posted by Frowner at 11:59 AM on February 15 [21 favorites]
I know a woman who got scammed by the "grandson in trouble" thing. I was the one who told her she had been scammed. She was mortified when she realized what I was telling her.
My father-in-law fell for those "We're calling from Microsoft, you have a virus" scams a couple of times, each time to the tune of a few hundred dollars.
Remember "replacement toner" scams back in the '90s an early 2000s? I knew a couple of people who got taken in by those.
posted by briank at 12:10 PM on February 15 [4 favorites]
My father-in-law fell for those "We're calling from Microsoft, you have a virus" scams a couple of times, each time to the tune of a few hundred dollars.
Remember "replacement toner" scams back in the '90s an early 2000s? I knew a couple of people who got taken in by those.
posted by briank at 12:10 PM on February 15 [4 favorites]
I avoid this whole problem by basically never answering the phone unless I know who it is, and even then I'm putting it at like 50% odds that I answer.
posted by kbanas at 12:12 PM on February 15 [64 favorites]
posted by kbanas at 12:12 PM on February 15 [64 favorites]
I asked the teller for $50,000. The woman behind the thick glass window raised her eyebrows, disappeared into a back room, came back with a large metal box of $100 bills, and counted them out with a machine. Then she pushed the stacks of bills through the slot along with a sheet of paper warning me against scams. I thanked her and left.
Why didn't the bank intervene at this point? A regular customer suddenly shows up looking nervous and asks to withdraw $50,000, a hefty 5/8ths of her total savings account, in cash? How is this not a red flag that crimes may be afoot?
You can't go to CVS and buy a $100 gift card without at least having to click through that little screen acknowledging that you're not buying the card for a variety of fraud-adjacent reasons (payment of debts, payment of fines, someone on the internet told you to buy them). Why isn't the bank at least asking the question: do you need help? are you safe?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:12 PM on February 15 [61 favorites]
Why didn't the bank intervene at this point? A regular customer suddenly shows up looking nervous and asks to withdraw $50,000, a hefty 5/8ths of her total savings account, in cash? How is this not a red flag that crimes may be afoot?
You can't go to CVS and buy a $100 gift card without at least having to click through that little screen acknowledging that you're not buying the card for a variety of fraud-adjacent reasons (payment of debts, payment of fines, someone on the internet told you to buy them). Why isn't the bank at least asking the question: do you need help? are you safe?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:12 PM on February 15 [61 favorites]
Defeat scammers with this one weird trick:
Never answer the phone.
posted by stobor at 12:12 PM on February 15 [51 favorites]
Never answer the phone.
posted by stobor at 12:12 PM on February 15 [51 favorites]
I know that the victim had been thoroughly convinced not to tell anyone, even her husband, but like, the bank has the perfect opportunity to intervene or delay things with some BS about not having the enough bills to satisfy the request.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:14 PM on February 15 [18 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:14 PM on February 15 [18 favorites]
I get probably three calls a week on the voicemail from the same robocall woman telling me that either my social insurance number has expired and I need to press one to reactivate it or that my (non-existent) Amazon account shows two recent purchases for $900 and $3000, and could I press one if I wish to dispute these charges. This morning she called to tell me I was $35,000 in arrears on last year’s taxes and I could press one to speak to an agent.
Whoever is at extension one is very busy.
I wonder if my credit union even has $50,000 in cash on site.
A bank a few blocks from me has been there since the 1950s and I noticed recently that signs are posted in the doors saying that save for the ATMs, there is no cash in the building. I had occasion to go in once a few months ago and the main banking room (where in days gone past there would have been a half-dozen tellers) now had removed all of the desks and chairs and now has a bunch of, er, beanbag-chair-sized pillows strewn about for, I guess, the comfort of people waiting for an appointment in one of the adjoining offices.
I can’t imagine a senior citizen who’s had an account at the branch coming in for the first time in a couple of years to find their branch of a national bank has been replaced with a 1972 rumpus room.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:19 PM on February 15 [22 favorites]
Whoever is at extension one is very busy.
I wonder if my credit union even has $50,000 in cash on site.
A bank a few blocks from me has been there since the 1950s and I noticed recently that signs are posted in the doors saying that save for the ATMs, there is no cash in the building. I had occasion to go in once a few months ago and the main banking room (where in days gone past there would have been a half-dozen tellers) now had removed all of the desks and chairs and now has a bunch of, er, beanbag-chair-sized pillows strewn about for, I guess, the comfort of people waiting for an appointment in one of the adjoining offices.
I can’t imagine a senior citizen who’s had an account at the branch coming in for the first time in a couple of years to find their branch of a national bank has been replaced with a 1972 rumpus room.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:19 PM on February 15 [22 favorites]
Part of the problem is that for the past several hundred years, banks have been expected to be able to immediately fulfill their depositors' requests. Banks that didn't immediately hand over whatever cash a depositor asked for were presumed to be failing, thus leading to a bank run. The idea that a bank should protect you from yourself is fairly new.
posted by Hatashran at 12:23 PM on February 15 [16 favorites]
posted by Hatashran at 12:23 PM on February 15 [16 favorites]
It’s fascinating to see the shift of the telephone from being how you talk to whoever is in a room to being a personal data device you never answer.
Has any other technology inverted, on so many fronts, so completely?
posted by davemee at 12:28 PM on February 15 [32 favorites]
Has any other technology inverted, on so many fronts, so completely?
posted by davemee at 12:28 PM on February 15 [32 favorites]
I would scoff at her gullibility but when she talked about how she would do anything for her son, I have to say, if you vaguely threatened or made me worry about my mom or my husband, you might be able to get me. Those two are the people I love most and if a scam artist played their cards by using knowledge of them, it could happen to me.
In any case, I find the block unknown phone calls feature on iOS to be the best fucking thing ever to prevent one avenue of getting to me.
posted by Kitteh at 12:28 PM on February 15 [10 favorites]
In any case, I find the block unknown phone calls feature on iOS to be the best fucking thing ever to prevent one avenue of getting to me.
posted by Kitteh at 12:28 PM on February 15 [10 favorites]
The (fictional) graphic novel Parachute Kids by Betty C. Tang, which is closely based on the actual lived experiences of underage Taiwanese children attending school in the US while living alone (eg not in a boarding school or with a host family) including the author and her friends
includes a story of how they got scammed by someone who rang them and claimed to be from immigration - telling them they would be deported or jailed for overstaying their visa, but they could avoid it if they paid.
The scammer was in no way linked to any government entity - their method was just to call lots of numbers out of the phone book in areas with high levels of Asian residents, and hope to scare people - and it worked disturbingly often.
It would have been bad enough if they had been scamming adults,
but these were teenagers/12 year olds living alone, who lost a lump sum of money that was supposed to last them for their rent/groceries for a year - and their parents couldn't replace it without serious hardship.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:28 PM on February 15 [5 favorites]
includes a story of how they got scammed by someone who rang them and claimed to be from immigration - telling them they would be deported or jailed for overstaying their visa, but they could avoid it if they paid.
The scammer was in no way linked to any government entity - their method was just to call lots of numbers out of the phone book in areas with high levels of Asian residents, and hope to scare people - and it worked disturbingly often.
It would have been bad enough if they had been scamming adults,
but these were teenagers/12 year olds living alone, who lost a lump sum of money that was supposed to last them for their rent/groceries for a year - and their parents couldn't replace it without serious hardship.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:28 PM on February 15 [5 favorites]
I like to hope that even / especially if I believed this was the real FTC that I would take, "If you talk to a lawyer, there will be severe penalties," as a sign that I should definitely talk to a lawyer.
posted by RobotHero at 12:34 PM on February 15 [34 favorites]
posted by RobotHero at 12:34 PM on February 15 [34 favorites]
>Has any other technology inverted, on so many fronts, so completely?
killed my landline in 2021; feels weird but when I'm up in the attic I want to rip the unused AT&T wiring out completely.
posted by torokunai at 12:36 PM on February 15 [4 favorites]
killed my landline in 2021; feels weird but when I'm up in the attic I want to rip the unused AT&T wiring out completely.
posted by torokunai at 12:36 PM on February 15 [4 favorites]
I think the thing that stood out to me about this story is also that the class of the targets is also what makes them gullible to these scams. If someone my friends or close family member, and pretends to be the cops or CIA or IRS, the response is “fuck off piggie, I’ll take care of my own, let them come.” The idea of handing a single dime to the cops would never occur to them. They might start packing, or start ditching tech and inventing some elaborate system of communication and codes, or immediately move to Venezuela for two years until they were convinced it wasn’t real, but giving people money on the idea that authority figures are safe would never be one of the options.
These scams only operate on the basis of the idea that if these were real authority figures they *would* have been safe. It’s a really fascinating look at another world.
posted by corb at 12:44 PM on February 15 [39 favorites]
These scams only operate on the basis of the idea that if these were real authority figures they *would* have been safe. It’s a really fascinating look at another world.
posted by corb at 12:44 PM on February 15 [39 favorites]
(I forgot to add: the scam pulled on the Taiwanese kids/teens studying in the US was in the 1980s/1990s - it was in the days of landlines and before the internet.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:44 PM on February 15 [1 favorite]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:44 PM on February 15 [1 favorite]
A couple of banks in my town have recently helped stop or in one case, help catch a scammer when the bank manager knew the customer, and realized that something was wrong. The scams weren't nearly as sophisticated as this one.
I don't know what the psychology is that allows us to continue to go along a path even when our mental alarm bells are going off. Why do we commit to something when we feel as if something's wrong?
Just a week ago,I had a Verizon salesman at the door, all dressed up; he happened to catch me literally on the day that I'd been thinking again about dumping my internet service. He got a lot of info out of me, we arranged an appointment, and were all set when I realized he wasn't wearing an identification badge. I asked him for it and he just kind of waved his hands around. Still it wasn't enough to make me order him off the property. I went to the Verizon site, found a customer service number and, miracle of miracles actually got someone on the phone. I read back the addresses of the emails he had sent me and Verizon confirmed them and that they had someone in my general part of town soliciting business. Oh, and I took some cellphone photos of him when he walked away and send them to someone with a jokey comment about if I turned up murdered, start the investigation with this guy. The installation guy came this week; I ended up cancelling because of some other service/cost issues but I continue to really wonder what I was thinking. I'm convinced, more or less, that it was legitimate because the whole thing was rather elaborate with emails, the call to Verizon (which didn't really prove anything), the installation guy showing up, etc. But after reading this, it's obvious that scams have become much more complex. Luckily, if he succeeded in scamming me, I have absolutely no where near $50,000 waiting to be stolen.
posted by etaoin at 12:49 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
I don't know what the psychology is that allows us to continue to go along a path even when our mental alarm bells are going off. Why do we commit to something when we feel as if something's wrong?
Just a week ago,I had a Verizon salesman at the door, all dressed up; he happened to catch me literally on the day that I'd been thinking again about dumping my internet service. He got a lot of info out of me, we arranged an appointment, and were all set when I realized he wasn't wearing an identification badge. I asked him for it and he just kind of waved his hands around. Still it wasn't enough to make me order him off the property. I went to the Verizon site, found a customer service number and, miracle of miracles actually got someone on the phone. I read back the addresses of the emails he had sent me and Verizon confirmed them and that they had someone in my general part of town soliciting business. Oh, and I took some cellphone photos of him when he walked away and send them to someone with a jokey comment about if I turned up murdered, start the investigation with this guy. The installation guy came this week; I ended up cancelling because of some other service/cost issues but I continue to really wonder what I was thinking. I'm convinced, more or less, that it was legitimate because the whole thing was rather elaborate with emails, the call to Verizon (which didn't really prove anything), the installation guy showing up, etc. But after reading this, it's obvious that scams have become much more complex. Luckily, if he succeeded in scamming me, I have absolutely no where near $50,000 waiting to be stolen.
posted by etaoin at 12:49 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
This is really unsettling.
Not the same type of scam, but I -- a person who does computer stuff for a living and generally thinks "I'd never fall for something so obvious" -- came extremely close to falling victim to a scam where a friend video called me on facebook messenger asking for help getting back into her account. I was in the middle of a work thing and thought "oh sure, I can help". In retrospect, it was odd that she would have reached out to me for this and it was also odd that the video call dropped almost immediately. But again, I was in the middle of a work thing so I was distracted.
The thing is -- this means that the scammer got my face and voice to use on someone else. When this sort of social engineering meets up with the next generation of deepfake AI that's just around the corner, things are going to really scary.
It's probably time to start thinking about memorable code phrases to use with your close friends and relatives. E.g., "Oh I was just thinking about that time we ate at that basketball restaurant. Do you remember what you ordered? Yeah, I ordered the shoe, it was amazing!" Something like that could still theoretically be hacked but it's better than nothing
posted by treepour at 12:50 PM on February 15 [32 favorites]
Not the same type of scam, but I -- a person who does computer stuff for a living and generally thinks "I'd never fall for something so obvious" -- came extremely close to falling victim to a scam where a friend video called me on facebook messenger asking for help getting back into her account. I was in the middle of a work thing and thought "oh sure, I can help". In retrospect, it was odd that she would have reached out to me for this and it was also odd that the video call dropped almost immediately. But again, I was in the middle of a work thing so I was distracted.
The thing is -- this means that the scammer got my face and voice to use on someone else. When this sort of social engineering meets up with the next generation of deepfake AI that's just around the corner, things are going to really scary.
It's probably time to start thinking about memorable code phrases to use with your close friends and relatives. E.g., "Oh I was just thinking about that time we ate at that basketball restaurant. Do you remember what you ordered? Yeah, I ordered the shoe, it was amazing!" Something like that could still theoretically be hacked but it's better than nothing
posted by treepour at 12:50 PM on February 15 [32 favorites]
Yeah, corb, I think it's interesting she seems wary of bureaucracy but to trust these particular scammers. But then I think, she's a well-connected writer and editor in New York, and a lot of her life probably *is* about working with the right people to resolve an operational jam.
It really does seem like a well-crafted scam. Starting with what seems like a routinish "yup, that's fraud, not me" call from Amazon is pretty smart.
posted by smelendez at 1:00 PM on February 15 [4 favorites]
It really does seem like a well-crafted scam. Starting with what seems like a routinish "yup, that's fraud, not me" call from Amazon is pretty smart.
posted by smelendez at 1:00 PM on February 15 [4 favorites]
Did she ever mention proof that someone had hacked a camera or watched outside so that they saw her son playing? Or was that just talented cold-reading?
posted by Countess Elena at 1:03 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 1:03 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
I also don't answer the phone to numbers I don't recognize, but I get endless scam emails. Usually they're the same ("we have hacked your machine and have video of you jerking it to very naughty porn, blah blah") but they're still disconcerting to get and it's easy to see how people fall for this stuff...especially if they were threatening your loved ones. A distant relative lost their life savings to a lottery scam many years ago, before the internet.
posted by maxwelton at 1:07 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]
posted by maxwelton at 1:07 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]
Remember "replacement toner" scams back in the '90s an early 2000s?
At the insurance company I worked at, I was the designated "toner ordering guy" both because I knew what they were trying to do, and if I was bored I'd keep these guys on the phone by sounding helpful but acting incompetent -- "I'm here at the copier, where's the model number? Do I have to open it up?" -- until they got bored trying to get me to say the word "yes".
My grandma once greeted me with "how was Canada?" which to my confused face explained a scammer called her, social-engineered a grandson's name out of her and claimed he/I was in jail in Canada and needed bail money. She said "well you probably belong there then" and hung up on him/me. She was a sharp lady.
I type the phrase "Microsoft will never email you to tell you your email password has expired" to the owner of the company I work at more often than I like. He's the reason we turned on two-factor authentication, more than once I've spent the afternoon fighting whatever person/bot took over his email account.
Cory Doctorow, who also really should know better, fell for a scam too, so nobody is safe.
However -- I, too, caught myself a few seconds too late having tried logging into a site I should have know wasn't really the Microsoft O365 login page. Quickly closed things, changed passwords, all was good, but it only takes a little bit of inattention to cause a lot of trouble.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:09 PM on February 15 [19 favorites]
At the insurance company I worked at, I was the designated "toner ordering guy" both because I knew what they were trying to do, and if I was bored I'd keep these guys on the phone by sounding helpful but acting incompetent -- "I'm here at the copier, where's the model number? Do I have to open it up?" -- until they got bored trying to get me to say the word "yes".
My grandma once greeted me with "how was Canada?" which to my confused face explained a scammer called her, social-engineered a grandson's name out of her and claimed he/I was in jail in Canada and needed bail money. She said "well you probably belong there then" and hung up on him/me. She was a sharp lady.
I type the phrase "Microsoft will never email you to tell you your email password has expired" to the owner of the company I work at more often than I like. He's the reason we turned on two-factor authentication, more than once I've spent the afternoon fighting whatever person/bot took over his email account.
Cory Doctorow, who also really should know better, fell for a scam too, so nobody is safe.
However -- I, too, caught myself a few seconds too late having tried logging into a site I should have know wasn't really the Microsoft O365 login page. Quickly closed things, changed passwords, all was good, but it only takes a little bit of inattention to cause a lot of trouble.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:09 PM on February 15 [19 favorites]
I realize that not everyone has this luxury, but iOS has a feature called "Silence unknown callers." I assume android has a similar feature.
If you get dozens of spam calls a week from spoofed local prefixes, this is a lifesaver. It no longer interrupts you, and they can still leave a voicemail for you to listen to at your convenience.
posted by stobor at 1:10 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]
If you get dozens of spam calls a week from spoofed local prefixes, this is a lifesaver. It no longer interrupts you, and they can still leave a voicemail for you to listen to at your convenience.
posted by stobor at 1:10 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]
Why didn't the bank intervene at this point? A regular customer suddenly shows up looking nervous and asks to withdraw $50,000, a hefty 5/8ths of her total savings account, in cash? How is this not a red flag that crimes may be afoot?
There is a form that the bank must fill out called a Currency Transaction Report, and they may also have filled out a Suspicious Activity Report. These both go to the IRS and are designed to combat money laundering. The bank does not have to tell the customer that they are submitting this form, but I wonder in this case if merely knowing about that requirement would have stopped the scam in its tracks.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:11 PM on February 15 [10 favorites]
There is a form that the bank must fill out called a Currency Transaction Report, and they may also have filled out a Suspicious Activity Report. These both go to the IRS and are designed to combat money laundering. The bank does not have to tell the customer that they are submitting this form, but I wonder in this case if merely knowing about that requirement would have stopped the scam in its tracks.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:11 PM on February 15 [10 favorites]
Both jobs that i’ve had at 200+ person companies have had mandatory training on detecting scams, focusing on the “text from boss, buy them a gift card” type. Hopefully it becomes more widespread.
Then there was pen testing where we had to repeat the training if we clicked on a certain link in an email. I of course spotted it but was curious how good it would be so i opened it in a sandboxed VM. (It was not good.) This didn’t fly as explanation. I left the company before i had to repeat the training.
posted by supercres at 1:16 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]
Then there was pen testing where we had to repeat the training if we clicked on a certain link in an email. I of course spotted it but was curious how good it would be so i opened it in a sandboxed VM. (It was not good.) This didn’t fly as explanation. I left the company before i had to repeat the training.
posted by supercres at 1:16 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]
Cory Doctorow was scammed by being asked for the last seven digits of his credit card, rather than just the last four, and since the first 9 digits of cards issued by his credit union are all identical, that gave the scammers access to his whole number. I could see a lot of people falling for that one.
I get irritated by how many things now require two-factor authorization or even more, but I will try to tamp that down.
I came close to falling for a scam via Facebook messenger last year; it appeared to come from a friend and offered me a kind of support I'd actually been accessing quite a bit after the end of my marriage in late 2022. Fortunately, I've dealt with a lot of bureaucracies and public services and bailed when I was asked to fill out an application that existed only as a series of questions in a message that I would also answer via message. They caught me at the right time with the right hook or it would never have gone that far.
posted by Well I never at 1:19 PM on February 15 [7 favorites]
I get irritated by how many things now require two-factor authorization or even more, but I will try to tamp that down.
I came close to falling for a scam via Facebook messenger last year; it appeared to come from a friend and offered me a kind of support I'd actually been accessing quite a bit after the end of my marriage in late 2022. Fortunately, I've dealt with a lot of bureaucracies and public services and bailed when I was asked to fill out an application that existed only as a series of questions in a message that I would also answer via message. They caught me at the right time with the right hook or it would never have gone that far.
posted by Well I never at 1:19 PM on February 15 [7 favorites]
Why didn't the bank intervene at this point? A regular customer suddenly shows up looking nervous and asks to withdraw $50,000, a hefty 5/8ths of her total savings account, in cash? How is this not a red flag that crimes may be afoot?
One of the things that scammers do is lay the groundwork that you DO NOT tell the bank or the authorities that you're getting this "time limited special deal" with them and that the bank WILL ask you these questions and these are the SPECIFIC things you say to them to allay their concerns.
Also trying to get banks to police this would generate so many false positives, for many time critical transactions. I actually had a friend who paid their builder in cash, he got the money in those actual bags like you see in the cartoons from 30 years ago when villains would rob a bank. I paid $14,000 in cash to the people who built my driveway, concrete path, fencing, and my garden beds, so withdrawing that amount can be pretty routine for banks. Any enforced delays just frustrates customers and businesses, the bank gets a bad reputation and everyone just uses a different bank instead that allows you easy access to your money. You'd be delaying 99.99% of legitimate transactions to stop the 0.001% of fraudulent ones, and these delays have real consequences - money can't be transferred? The planned work doesn't get done, the contract is unfulfilled, etc. I literally had to pay cash upfront for surgery at a hospital and if the payment wasn't made on the morning itself they would tell me to come back for surgery another time.
The fundamental issue is ownership, this is your money, the bank has no right to deny you the ability to use it as you see fit. This isn't going to happen (yet), but I can imagine a dystopian cyberpunk world where banks want to have more control over your money. Say you owe them money for a credit card or mortgage, they'd start denying your transactions to UberEats or AirBNB or Netflix to ensure your debt to them gets paid first, with the message "This transaction is Financially Unwise and has been denied." Or you go.. maybe this bank sucks, I want to withdraw my money and put it in a better bank... "Transaction Denied... Your money is staying with us.".
posted by xdvesper at 1:38 PM on February 15 [11 favorites]
One of the things that scammers do is lay the groundwork that you DO NOT tell the bank or the authorities that you're getting this "time limited special deal" with them and that the bank WILL ask you these questions and these are the SPECIFIC things you say to them to allay their concerns.
Also trying to get banks to police this would generate so many false positives, for many time critical transactions. I actually had a friend who paid their builder in cash, he got the money in those actual bags like you see in the cartoons from 30 years ago when villains would rob a bank. I paid $14,000 in cash to the people who built my driveway, concrete path, fencing, and my garden beds, so withdrawing that amount can be pretty routine for banks. Any enforced delays just frustrates customers and businesses, the bank gets a bad reputation and everyone just uses a different bank instead that allows you easy access to your money. You'd be delaying 99.99% of legitimate transactions to stop the 0.001% of fraudulent ones, and these delays have real consequences - money can't be transferred? The planned work doesn't get done, the contract is unfulfilled, etc. I literally had to pay cash upfront for surgery at a hospital and if the payment wasn't made on the morning itself they would tell me to come back for surgery another time.
The fundamental issue is ownership, this is your money, the bank has no right to deny you the ability to use it as you see fit. This isn't going to happen (yet), but I can imagine a dystopian cyberpunk world where banks want to have more control over your money. Say you owe them money for a credit card or mortgage, they'd start denying your transactions to UberEats or AirBNB or Netflix to ensure your debt to them gets paid first, with the message "This transaction is Financially Unwise and has been denied." Or you go.. maybe this bank sucks, I want to withdraw my money and put it in a better bank... "Transaction Denied... Your money is staying with us.".
posted by xdvesper at 1:38 PM on February 15 [11 favorites]
I get irritated by how many things now require two-factor authorization or even more, but I will try to tamp that down.two-factor is an awesome corpo-hack. it does increase your personal security but it's murder on your privacy. Your phone number is the most powerful data aggregation key there is. It's more stable than addresses and easier to match than names or fingerprints.
posted by Sauce Trough at 1:42 PM on February 15 [19 favorites]
My mom got taken by one of these kinds of scams. The whole Amazon fraudulent iPhone business. It got to the point where they had gotten her to install remote desktop software on her computer. Her real saving grace was the fact that, when they asked her to buy thousands of dollars worth of gift cards, she bought King Kullen gift cards which were of absolutely no use to the scammers. (King Kullen is an East Coast grocer.) She sort of realized what was going on in the middle of it and I got a call where she laid out what was happening. I told her to just unplug her computer from the wall, which she did. At that point the scammers immediately called her and demanded she plug her computer back in. She did not. She gave me their phone number.
I called the phone number and told them I had been informed about a fraudulent iPhone purchase on my account. After going back and forth with them I asked them how they felt about themselves, being professional scam artists. They hung up.
I went to my mom's house, took the hard drives from her computer, got vital info off of them in my office and then wiped the drives. They got an entirely new computer.
She now knows to call me if anyone calls with something fishy like that.
two-factor is an awesome corpo-hack. it does increase your personal security but it's murder on your privacy.
Not if you use Google Authenticator. Never, ever, ever use SMS as your 2FA, for the reasons you have stated.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:45 PM on February 15 [11 favorites]
I called the phone number and told them I had been informed about a fraudulent iPhone purchase on my account. After going back and forth with them I asked them how they felt about themselves, being professional scam artists. They hung up.
I went to my mom's house, took the hard drives from her computer, got vital info off of them in my office and then wiped the drives. They got an entirely new computer.
She now knows to call me if anyone calls with something fishy like that.
two-factor is an awesome corpo-hack. it does increase your personal security but it's murder on your privacy.
Not if you use Google Authenticator. Never, ever, ever use SMS as your 2FA, for the reasons you have stated.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:45 PM on February 15 [11 favorites]
My mom got a call once from 'Stephanie' at her bank branch claiming that there was an issue with her account's contact info. She didn't feel comfortable with the call, so she told Stephanie that she'd call her back at the bank's main number. She did, and the bank didn't know who Stephanie was, so OK scam defeated.
Then a week later Stephanie calls again. Mom says "I checked with the bank and no one knows you" (it's a local bank). Stephanie says "oh, I'm the branch's new $SOMETHING_MANAGER and I'm working from home while doing family leave". Nice try Stephanie! But my mom was more a little more unsure than I, and she decided to call the bank again. Once again, they said "There's no Stephanie in our employee directory". OK. Good to double check.
For the next two weeks, Stephanie would call and my Mom would just let it go to voicemail. Eventually she noticed that the voicemails were asking her to dial the bank's main number and an extension. So she called the main number again and said "Who is at extension XXXX?". The bank said, no-one. Huh.
Finally after like two months Mom goes to the bank branch in person and just happens to say "you know, I keep getting these calls from a scammer named Stephanie claiming she works here" at which point the bank manager comes running out of her office to say a) Stephanie *IS* a new employee and she is working from home but the bank's online directory was never updated and this has been a huge problem but it's been resolved now and here is Stephanie's business card and this has been happening so often that she has a stack of them in the branch.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:47 PM on February 15 [65 favorites]
Then a week later Stephanie calls again. Mom says "I checked with the bank and no one knows you" (it's a local bank). Stephanie says "oh, I'm the branch's new $SOMETHING_MANAGER and I'm working from home while doing family leave". Nice try Stephanie! But my mom was more a little more unsure than I, and she decided to call the bank again. Once again, they said "There's no Stephanie in our employee directory". OK. Good to double check.
For the next two weeks, Stephanie would call and my Mom would just let it go to voicemail. Eventually she noticed that the voicemails were asking her to dial the bank's main number and an extension. So she called the main number again and said "Who is at extension XXXX?". The bank said, no-one. Huh.
Finally after like two months Mom goes to the bank branch in person and just happens to say "you know, I keep getting these calls from a scammer named Stephanie claiming she works here" at which point the bank manager comes running out of her office to say a) Stephanie *IS* a new employee and she is working from home but the bank's online directory was never updated and this has been a huge problem but it's been resolved now and here is Stephanie's business card and this has been happening so often that she has a stack of them in the branch.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:47 PM on February 15 [65 favorites]
...for many time critical transactions. I actually had a friend who paid their builder in cash...
I once had to go to Bank A (where I have large savings but no checking) to withdraw $15,000 in cash to carry across town to Bank B (where my checking and other stuff is) because both banks told me that a transfer of that size, or getting a cashier's check that size, could delay the transaction for up to a month, when I had to pay a roofer within a couple weeks. Cash, however, had some scrutiny but didn't have the built-in delays of the intermediaries to wreak havoc.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:48 PM on February 15 [2 favorites]
I once had to go to Bank A (where I have large savings but no checking) to withdraw $15,000 in cash to carry across town to Bank B (where my checking and other stuff is) because both banks told me that a transfer of that size, or getting a cashier's check that size, could delay the transaction for up to a month, when I had to pay a roofer within a couple weeks. Cash, however, had some scrutiny but didn't have the built-in delays of the intermediaries to wreak havoc.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:48 PM on February 15 [2 favorites]
in the moment, while you are scared and amped up, I don't know if I would spot the same things
I rolled my eyes a lot reading the article, because
1) Cops don't call first
2) I am not running all over town doing legwork for you
3) I couldn't get my hands on $50k cash in 24 months, let alone hours
BUUUUT after rolling my eyes, I remembered a time when I got scammed: I was a restaurant supervisor who worked a midnight shift and non-sketchy presenting person was directed my way by the server. They said they had been in during the day and there had been an issue with their meal. They hadn't brought it up at the time, but had spoken to the manager - mentioned them by their name - later over the phone and had been told they could get a refund the next time they were in. The biggest red flag was who the hell doesn't complain and get a refund at the time (They were in a rush then, totally polite about explaining) and why hadn't the manager informed me of the situation (Though the manager Raye was disorganized and I didn't think much of her professionalism, so it was possible).
It was absolutely fishy and surreal and it was heightened by the awareness of the fishy surreality. So you go along to get along. I gave them <$50 out of the till and as soon as the money was out of my hands and they were out the door my denial evaporated. So I paid the sucker tax and repaid the till out of my own pocket, lesson learned.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:54 PM on February 15 [11 favorites]
I rolled my eyes a lot reading the article, because
1) Cops don't call first
2) I am not running all over town doing legwork for you
3) I couldn't get my hands on $50k cash in 24 months, let alone hours
BUUUUT after rolling my eyes, I remembered a time when I got scammed: I was a restaurant supervisor who worked a midnight shift and non-sketchy presenting person was directed my way by the server. They said they had been in during the day and there had been an issue with their meal. They hadn't brought it up at the time, but had spoken to the manager - mentioned them by their name - later over the phone and had been told they could get a refund the next time they were in. The biggest red flag was who the hell doesn't complain and get a refund at the time (They were in a rush then, totally polite about explaining) and why hadn't the manager informed me of the situation (Though the manager Raye was disorganized and I didn't think much of her professionalism, so it was possible).
It was absolutely fishy and surreal and it was heightened by the awareness of the fishy surreality. So you go along to get along. I gave them <$50 out of the till and as soon as the money was out of my hands and they were out the door my denial evaporated. So I paid the sucker tax and repaid the till out of my own pocket, lesson learned.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:54 PM on February 15 [11 favorites]
mandatory training on detecting scams
Ditto. The funny thing is, the company they've hired to oversee their security routinely sends out fake scams, and if you fall for one you have to take the training over. But if you do a "show original" on the offending email, it always includes the e-signature of the security consultant. 🙄
I always do that on suspicious emails anyway to look for fake domains, etc., but this makes it too easy.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 1:56 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
Ditto. The funny thing is, the company they've hired to oversee their security routinely sends out fake scams, and if you fall for one you have to take the training over. But if you do a "show original" on the offending email, it always includes the e-signature of the security consultant. 🙄
I always do that on suspicious emails anyway to look for fake domains, etc., but this makes it too easy.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 1:56 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
“ Starting with what seems like a routinish "yup, that's fraud, not me" call from Amazon is pretty smart.”
nothing is routine about that beginning, amazon would never do any such thing. amazon does not watch over you to ensure you aren’t buying suspiciously too much shit from them.
there is surely more than one type of person who can get taken by an obvious scam. but one of the leading types is the type who responds by saying, If they could fool me, they could fool ANYONE ! rather than having the humbler, yet less ego-fragile response of, If they could fool me, I must not be as smart or attentive as I thought.
it is just as illegal and unkind as to defraud the careless, the ignorant, the proud friend of real-estate developers, and the overconfident as to defraud anybody else. there is no need to participate in the pretense that anyone who is good at taking money from people rich in both cash and shoeboxes must be fiendishly sophisticated at it.
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:06 PM on February 15 [16 favorites]
nothing is routine about that beginning, amazon would never do any such thing. amazon does not watch over you to ensure you aren’t buying suspiciously too much shit from them.
there is surely more than one type of person who can get taken by an obvious scam. but one of the leading types is the type who responds by saying, If they could fool me, they could fool ANYONE ! rather than having the humbler, yet less ego-fragile response of, If they could fool me, I must not be as smart or attentive as I thought.
it is just as illegal and unkind as to defraud the careless, the ignorant, the proud friend of real-estate developers, and the overconfident as to defraud anybody else. there is no need to participate in the pretense that anyone who is good at taking money from people rich in both cash and shoeboxes must be fiendishly sophisticated at it.
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:06 PM on February 15 [16 favorites]
I know the pious MeFi response here is the one given by many above that this could happen to anyone and there but for the grace of God and we should not, but...
No. This is completely ridiculous. Amazon doesn't call you, to begin with. That isn't smart, it's moronic because it doesn't happen. "Amazon" isn't going to refer you to the FTC. The FTC isn't going to refer you to the CIA. That is insane.
posted by star gentle uterus at 2:08 PM on February 15 [55 favorites]
No. This is completely ridiculous. Amazon doesn't call you, to begin with. That isn't smart, it's moronic because it doesn't happen. "Amazon" isn't going to refer you to the FTC. The FTC isn't going to refer you to the CIA. That is insane.
posted by star gentle uterus at 2:08 PM on February 15 [55 favorites]
No. This is completely ridiculous.
I've sometimes engaged in scambaiting. I've done things like kept people on the line by asking them to repeat themselves, I've given out ludicrously wrong information, and I've jerked a lot of scammers around for the fun of it.
Even though I know there's really nothing they can do to me and that it's not in their interest to seek retribution, I've still turned white as a sheet on the few occasions where I've wasted 15-20 minutes of a scammer's time and they've angrily hung up on me only to immediately call back with the same fake caller-id number. Why are they calling back? I don't know. I don't answer. Is this small amount of aggression utterly terrifying and enough to pierce my perceived safety? You bet!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:16 PM on February 15 [5 favorites]
I've sometimes engaged in scambaiting. I've done things like kept people on the line by asking them to repeat themselves, I've given out ludicrously wrong information, and I've jerked a lot of scammers around for the fun of it.
Even though I know there's really nothing they can do to me and that it's not in their interest to seek retribution, I've still turned white as a sheet on the few occasions where I've wasted 15-20 minutes of a scammer's time and they've angrily hung up on me only to immediately call back with the same fake caller-id number. Why are they calling back? I don't know. I don't answer. Is this small amount of aggression utterly terrifying and enough to pierce my perceived safety? You bet!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:16 PM on February 15 [5 favorites]
Did she ever mention proof that someone had hacked a camera or watched outside so that they saw her son playing? Or was that just talented cold-reading?
there’s no indication that they knew anything about him but what she told them herself. repeatedly:
Can I just come to your office and sort this out in person?” I said. “It’s getting late, and I need to take my son trick-or-treating soon.”
“You can’t send a complete stranger to my home,” I said, my voice rising. “My 2-year-old son will be here.”
there is also no indication that the article is all true, other than the ‘why would anyone lie about this’ presumption that allegedly got her to begin with. but we must be trusting I suppose
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:28 PM on February 15 [16 favorites]
there’s no indication that they knew anything about him but what she told them herself. repeatedly:
Can I just come to your office and sort this out in person?” I said. “It’s getting late, and I need to take my son trick-or-treating soon.”
“You can’t send a complete stranger to my home,” I said, my voice rising. “My 2-year-old son will be here.”
there is also no indication that the article is all true, other than the ‘why would anyone lie about this’ presumption that allegedly got her to begin with. but we must be trusting I suppose
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:28 PM on February 15 [16 favorites]
Also, where else would her 2-year-old son be? If you guessed at any random time during the day that my 9-month-old daughter is playing in the living room, you'd have a very good shot at being right.
posted by star gentle uterus at 2:33 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
posted by star gentle uterus at 2:33 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
corb's comment expresses my feelings exactly. This particular scam relies on the notion that if it were actually a cop on the phone line (rather than an impersonator), then it would be OK to follow these instructions.
But that's not true! Cops lie all the fricking time. They lie to lure juveniles into false confessions. They lie under oath in a court of law. They even enter long-term sexual relationships and father children with suspects who they are investigating.
If you really believe you are under investigation - as this victim was told on the phone by the scammer - then the last thing you should be doing is continuing to converse with a cop. Hang up and call a lawyer.
And in any case, don't trust a cop with 50K of your cash money any more than you would a random stranger. In fact, cops taking cash away from people is literally a whole thing.
We're taught to trust authority, but authority isn't deserving of our trust.
Teach your children.
posted by splitpeasoup at 2:45 PM on February 15 [54 favorites]
But that's not true! Cops lie all the fricking time. They lie to lure juveniles into false confessions. They lie under oath in a court of law. They even enter long-term sexual relationships and father children with suspects who they are investigating.
If you really believe you are under investigation - as this victim was told on the phone by the scammer - then the last thing you should be doing is continuing to converse with a cop. Hang up and call a lawyer.
And in any case, don't trust a cop with 50K of your cash money any more than you would a random stranger. In fact, cops taking cash away from people is literally a whole thing.
We're taught to trust authority, but authority isn't deserving of our trust.
Teach your children.
posted by splitpeasoup at 2:45 PM on February 15 [54 favorites]
> rednikki: "I don't know how these people get their hooks in, but they do. If they catch you at the right moment, they can make you believe."
I think I read an article about scamming once which explained that scams often work by basically poking at the emotion centers of your brain in order to override the logical reasoning parts. There's a class of scams that mainly appeal to greed (e.g.: the black money scam, certain versions of the Spanish prisoner) but this one is plainly designed to appeal to fear. They keep stoking the flames on the emotional side (e.g.: amping up the sense of urgency, threats, etc...) in order to keep the mark from stopping and thinking clearly about exactly what is going on until it's too late.
posted by mhum at 2:57 PM on February 15 [5 favorites]
I think I read an article about scamming once which explained that scams often work by basically poking at the emotion centers of your brain in order to override the logical reasoning parts. There's a class of scams that mainly appeal to greed (e.g.: the black money scam, certain versions of the Spanish prisoner) but this one is plainly designed to appeal to fear. They keep stoking the flames on the emotional side (e.g.: amping up the sense of urgency, threats, etc...) in order to keep the mark from stopping and thinking clearly about exactly what is going on until it's too late.
posted by mhum at 2:57 PM on February 15 [5 favorites]
WRT why didn’t the bank throw a flag at someone coming in to withdraw a large amount of money, vs “this is what banks do, they give people access to their money,” maybe this is a scam that mainly happens to white ppl. Bc when I went to the bank w my not white SIL to get out $10k a buy a car from a private seller, they kept us cooling our heels at the counter for more than an hour while they, idk, ran background checks on our biometric scans, grilled us relentlessly on the details of this car transaction, blathered about the labyrinth of regulations on this amount of money, etc. My husband, who’s allergic to cops, stayed in the car and was a ball of nerves when we finally came out.
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:11 PM on February 15 [25 favorites]
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:11 PM on February 15 [25 favorites]
I feel like some aspects of this story were embellished because they just don't make a ton of sense. Mostly the bits with her husband, who does not seem to convey the right sense of concern until AFTER she confesses; what I mean is, if my wife texted me that she might be dealing with identity theft, I would drop everything and come home immediately. I wouldn't finish my work day first, even if she told me not to worry. I really can't make sense of that aspect of the story.
That said, intimidation is a thing, and if someone can figure out how to push your buttons, they really can override all your normal, rational ways of dealing with stuff.
posted by Doleful Creature at 3:16 PM on February 15 [8 favorites]
That said, intimidation is a thing, and if someone can figure out how to push your buttons, they really can override all your normal, rational ways of dealing with stuff.
posted by Doleful Creature at 3:16 PM on February 15 [8 favorites]
Amazon doesn't call you, to begin with.
The annoying thing is, the actual Amazon page on this is maddeningly vague. It basically says, yes this is a scam but then says “While some departments at Amazon will make outbound calls to customers, Amazon will never ask you to disclose or verify sensitive personal information, or offer you a refund you do not expect.”
And like, how can that be true? What could Amazon be calling people about where they don’t need to verify who they’re talking to or ever gather any account details?
posted by smelendez at 3:18 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
The annoying thing is, the actual Amazon page on this is maddeningly vague. It basically says, yes this is a scam but then says “While some departments at Amazon will make outbound calls to customers, Amazon will never ask you to disclose or verify sensitive personal information, or offer you a refund you do not expect.”
And like, how can that be true? What could Amazon be calling people about where they don’t need to verify who they’re talking to or ever gather any account details?
posted by smelendez at 3:18 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
Anyone who thinks they could never fall for a scammer is a fool and you know what they say about a fool and their money. However, the idea of handing a shoebox full of cash to a stranger in a car just seems so far-fetched as an actual thing that any legitimate person would ask someone to do that I'm pretty sure I'd be safe from this particular scam. I can't imagine the success rate for this scam is very high but, as with all scams, they don't need many people to fall for it to be successful financially.
posted by dg at 3:30 PM on February 15 [14 favorites]
posted by dg at 3:30 PM on February 15 [14 favorites]
What could Amazon be calling people about where they don’t need to verify who they’re talking to or ever gather any account details?
if you delve deeply enough into their miserable customer service web tunnels, you can find & click a button to make them call you about your missing package if you don’t want to text with a robot. it’s what they have instead of listing a customer service number you can call yourself. it does work instantly though, so if it were legit you would know it. and I think you still have to yell at some robots first.
any good scam would lead with robots
posted by queenofbithynia at 3:33 PM on February 15 [9 favorites]
I think the thing that stood out to me about this story is also that the class of the targets is also what makes them gullible to these scams. If someone my friends or close family member, and pretends to be the cops or CIA or IRS, the response is “fuck off piggie, I’ll take care of my own, let them come"
Absolutely, I think it's absolutely wild that this was a Personal Finance Reporter - shows how trusting of the system they are.
posted by windbox at 3:35 PM on February 15 [8 favorites]
Absolutely, I think it's absolutely wild that this was a Personal Finance Reporter - shows how trusting of the system they are.
posted by windbox at 3:35 PM on February 15 [8 favorites]
There is a form that the bank must fill out called a Currency Transaction Report, and they may also have filled out a Suspicious Activity Report. These both go to the IRS and are designed to combat money laundering. The bank does not have to tell the customer that they are submitting this form, but I wonder in this case if merely knowing about that requirement would have stopped the scam in its tracks.
My understanding is that, in the case of the Suspicious Activity Report, the bank not only might not tell you but in fact cannot. I feel like there was a post on the Blue a while back about the system being rather Kafka-esque.
posted by solotoro at 3:37 PM on February 15 [1 favorite]
My understanding is that, in the case of the Suspicious Activity Report, the bank not only might not tell you but in fact cannot. I feel like there was a post on the Blue a while back about the system being rather Kafka-esque.
posted by solotoro at 3:37 PM on February 15 [1 favorite]
I would take, "If you talk to a lawyer, there will be severe penalties," as a sign that I should definitely talk to a lawyer.
If there's anything that American copaganda shows have highlighted, it's that asking for a lawyer is always taken as a sign of guilt and things get Much Worse for you.
posted by hanov3r at 3:42 PM on February 15 [19 favorites]
If there's anything that American copaganda shows have highlighted, it's that asking for a lawyer is always taken as a sign of guilt and things get Much Worse for you.
posted by hanov3r at 3:42 PM on February 15 [19 favorites]
Seems like a more obvious reason why banks wouldn't want to be in the business of cautioning you about your withdrawals is to avoid any potential liability for it: "Why didn't the bank warn me not to withdraw that $50,000 when it was obviously suspicious!"
posted by star gentle uterus at 3:44 PM on February 15 [5 favorites]
posted by star gentle uterus at 3:44 PM on February 15 [5 favorites]
This scam seems exceptional, but the most striking element to me was the cash drop off. Almost all of the scams I read about these days can be perpetrated by scammers anywhere in the world with zero risk to themselves-- they have the victim wire funds, purchase crypto currency, etc.
In this case they had to have an accomplice close enough to the victim to drive there (the article raises the possibility of a courier, but seems very unlikely).
posted by justkevin at 3:56 PM on February 15 [8 favorites]
In this case they had to have an accomplice close enough to the victim to drive there (the article raises the possibility of a courier, but seems very unlikely).
posted by justkevin at 3:56 PM on February 15 [8 favorites]
I dunno if this made it to the blue before (search isn't popping a match), but there was a scam going around a few years ago targeting therapists - knowing that some (many?) are subpoenaed to provide expert testimony in court, starting from a place of "you failed to appear for a subpoena" is brilliant social engineering.
My mom's been taken in by a couple of Internet scams - once calling a number from a "Your Microsoft license has expired" malicious pop-up, and once googling for a support telephone number for HP for help with her printer and getting, as the first result, a scammer's number.
posted by hanov3r at 3:57 PM on February 15 [5 favorites]
My mom's been taken in by a couple of Internet scams - once calling a number from a "Your Microsoft license has expired" malicious pop-up, and once googling for a support telephone number for HP for help with her printer and getting, as the first result, a scammer's number.
posted by hanov3r at 3:57 PM on February 15 [5 favorites]
I think of the car buying experience.
Car dealers sell cars day in and day out. Every day they’re doing this. You buy a car once every three to ten years. You are not going to out negotiate them. Likewise, it isn’t a level playing field.
I think it is unfair to require perfect responses, even if these seem obvious when described outside of the situation. Scammers have a lot of experience. They can hook you with a plausible Amazon scam story, then escalate stakes once you are involved. They hit you on a day when your toddler has been crying all night; you heard something disturbing on Facebook; your husband said something weird. They only have to be lucky once, you have to be lucky all the time.
None of these scams would be this effective in a functioning society. Oh, scam charges at Amazon? I will call the actual customer service line. Or file a chargeback. I’m a suspect in a drug smuggling case? Talk to my lawyer. Someone is identity thefting me? I can rely on legal protections to resolve them. I look scared and ask for a large bundle of cash at the bank? Maybe the teller or the manager could check it out. It could be anyone doing this to me? Well, I can rely on friends and family to help me.
Hyper-vigilant hyper-individualism is a standard that is not healthy or sustainable.
posted by theclaw at 4:05 PM on February 15 [39 favorites]
Car dealers sell cars day in and day out. Every day they’re doing this. You buy a car once every three to ten years. You are not going to out negotiate them. Likewise, it isn’t a level playing field.
I think it is unfair to require perfect responses, even if these seem obvious when described outside of the situation. Scammers have a lot of experience. They can hook you with a plausible Amazon scam story, then escalate stakes once you are involved. They hit you on a day when your toddler has been crying all night; you heard something disturbing on Facebook; your husband said something weird. They only have to be lucky once, you have to be lucky all the time.
None of these scams would be this effective in a functioning society. Oh, scam charges at Amazon? I will call the actual customer service line. Or file a chargeback. I’m a suspect in a drug smuggling case? Talk to my lawyer. Someone is identity thefting me? I can rely on legal protections to resolve them. I look scared and ask for a large bundle of cash at the bank? Maybe the teller or the manager could check it out. It could be anyone doing this to me? Well, I can rely on friends and family to help me.
Hyper-vigilant hyper-individualism is a standard that is not healthy or sustainable.
posted by theclaw at 4:05 PM on February 15 [39 favorites]
When I worked at Target we did what we could to stop people from buying gift cards for scammers, but people don't want to be told they're wrong in the best of circumstances. With scam victims, they've often been coached to deflect or deny, and it's even harder to pierce the armor to be like, "hey, you need to stop and think about this for a minute."
There was one guy who argued with me that he knew what he was doing, who came back about fifteen minutes later to say that he realized too late that I'd been right. He had me check the cards he'd bought and they'd already been drained.
There was a guy buying a bunch of gift cards at self checkout, who said that a VP from his company had emailed him to say he needed to drop everything and go buy gift cards. I said, "does he often email you? Do you have a phone number for him?" He stopped for a second, and I said "let me void this transaction for you, and if you come back after you talk to the VP, I'll ring you up." He came back to thank me for catching it.
There was a retired man who came to the Guest Service counter who said something about the gas company as I was walking by on my way to do something else. I basically spun on the spot and said, "the gas company won't ask you for Target gift cards." Turned out he'd already given them more than a thousand bucks and he was back for more until we caught the scam. I felt so bad for him. I don't think he had a lot of money to begin with, and there he was not only falling for a scam once, but staying on the hook for more.
That's not even counting the people who managed to do the whole thing at self checkout without ever speaking to an employee, or the store employees who got scammed over the phone (that one resulted in company wide training in how to recognize those calls). Or the people who came in after getting scammed to ask if they could get a refund. Uh, no, that's not how it works.
posted by fedward at 4:19 PM on February 15 [39 favorites]
There was one guy who argued with me that he knew what he was doing, who came back about fifteen minutes later to say that he realized too late that I'd been right. He had me check the cards he'd bought and they'd already been drained.
There was a guy buying a bunch of gift cards at self checkout, who said that a VP from his company had emailed him to say he needed to drop everything and go buy gift cards. I said, "does he often email you? Do you have a phone number for him?" He stopped for a second, and I said "let me void this transaction for you, and if you come back after you talk to the VP, I'll ring you up." He came back to thank me for catching it.
There was a retired man who came to the Guest Service counter who said something about the gas company as I was walking by on my way to do something else. I basically spun on the spot and said, "the gas company won't ask you for Target gift cards." Turned out he'd already given them more than a thousand bucks and he was back for more until we caught the scam. I felt so bad for him. I don't think he had a lot of money to begin with, and there he was not only falling for a scam once, but staying on the hook for more.
That's not even counting the people who managed to do the whole thing at self checkout without ever speaking to an employee, or the store employees who got scammed over the phone (that one resulted in company wide training in how to recognize those calls). Or the people who came in after getting scammed to ask if they could get a refund. Uh, no, that's not how it works.
posted by fedward at 4:19 PM on February 15 [39 favorites]
the idea of handing a shoebox full of cash to a stranger in a car just seems so far-fetched as an actual thing that any legitimate person would ask someone to do that I'm pretty sure I'd be safe from this particular scam.
I mean I would absolutely hand a shoebox full of cash to a stranger in a car; the day scammers start calling people asking for “all you can contribute for the mutual aid food fund for unbanked houseless comrades” I’m *fucked* but fortunately the amounts of cash I have available to contribute are lower and the amount of people this will work on are so low that I think I’m safe.
posted by corb at 4:20 PM on February 15 [12 favorites]
I mean I would absolutely hand a shoebox full of cash to a stranger in a car; the day scammers start calling people asking for “all you can contribute for the mutual aid food fund for unbanked houseless comrades” I’m *fucked* but fortunately the amounts of cash I have available to contribute are lower and the amount of people this will work on are so low that I think I’m safe.
posted by corb at 4:20 PM on February 15 [12 favorites]
I got scammed in October when I needed to park in downtown Portland. Street parking downtown uses an app called "Parking Kitty" instead of meters. We'd been living here for over a year but I'd never needed to use this before since every other time we'd had to park downtown my wife was with me and she'd installed the app the first time. Anyway, I was already stressed and in a rush about the work stuff I was downtown for, and realized I didn't have the app, googled it, installed, filled out my information, blah blah blah...
You all probably already see what I did wrong, but by not going through the app store, I got a spoofed thing on my phone that I had immediately given my credit card because that made sense in the moment. I was getting the calls from my bank within minutes, as was my wife, being asked about my purchases of expensive memberships to dating sites and shit. Easy enough to dispute the charges (again, our Credit Union was on top of it there) but it took forever to get my card actually replaced (finally got it a week ago.) So, decent-sized pain in the ass that was utterly preventable, but comes down to "I googled for the thing instead of going to the app store."
I've definitely fielded my share of scammer calls, mind you, and have never been hoodwinked by them, though at least one came close, a thing about back taxes which I'd been trying to deal with and get current on at the time. Calling me about taxes can absolutely short-circuit my logic via my anxiety spiking, but since I was pretty sure I'd put my issue behind me when I got this call, I had questions for the dude on the other end of the call here, and when he got angry and threatening in response to my questions, that was thankfully enough to break the spell there - it didn't make sense as anything other than an intimidation technique, and so I was able to break out in relieved laughter and hang up. But that could have gone bad had the conversation gone differently, I'm sure.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:37 PM on February 15 [13 favorites]
You all probably already see what I did wrong, but by not going through the app store, I got a spoofed thing on my phone that I had immediately given my credit card because that made sense in the moment. I was getting the calls from my bank within minutes, as was my wife, being asked about my purchases of expensive memberships to dating sites and shit. Easy enough to dispute the charges (again, our Credit Union was on top of it there) but it took forever to get my card actually replaced (finally got it a week ago.) So, decent-sized pain in the ass that was utterly preventable, but comes down to "I googled for the thing instead of going to the app store."
I've definitely fielded my share of scammer calls, mind you, and have never been hoodwinked by them, though at least one came close, a thing about back taxes which I'd been trying to deal with and get current on at the time. Calling me about taxes can absolutely short-circuit my logic via my anxiety spiking, but since I was pretty sure I'd put my issue behind me when I got this call, I had questions for the dude on the other end of the call here, and when he got angry and threatening in response to my questions, that was thankfully enough to break the spell there - it didn't make sense as anything other than an intimidation technique, and so I was able to break out in relieved laughter and hang up. But that could have gone bad had the conversation gone differently, I'm sure.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:37 PM on February 15 [13 favorites]
once googling for a support telephone number for HP for help with her printer and getting, as the first result, a scammer's number.
No, that was their business model, it just felt like a scam.
posted by biffa at 5:18 PM on February 15 [8 favorites]
No, that was their business model, it just felt like a scam.
posted by biffa at 5:18 PM on February 15 [8 favorites]
I think it's really easy to say "I wouldn't fall for this" but just the barrage of calls and information they gave to her ... yes, I can see how it would be easy to be overwhelmed and confused. I really only answer my phone if I'm expecting a call and even then I'm suspicious (I got a call from my hair salon that I answered and they were resecheduling me with someone else -- that was legit -- but I was suspect at first).
I do think the whole "put $50K in a shoebox" bit is a lot but also ... once you're already at that point, you're sort of all in on whatever these people are telling you. I get it.
(I posted a GoFundMe for my friend who is having a bad time on Facebook. This is friend that I clearly know and it was about something I'd also posted about. My mom, to her credit! asked me if I was the one who posted it and it was legit because she knew there were a lot of scams going around. So at least I'm hopeful she wouldn't fall for such a thing.)
posted by edencosmic at 5:49 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
I do think the whole "put $50K in a shoebox" bit is a lot but also ... once you're already at that point, you're sort of all in on whatever these people are telling you. I get it.
(I posted a GoFundMe for my friend who is having a bad time on Facebook. This is friend that I clearly know and it was about something I'd also posted about. My mom, to her credit! asked me if I was the one who posted it and it was legit because she knew there were a lot of scams going around. So at least I'm hopeful she wouldn't fall for such a thing.)
posted by edencosmic at 5:49 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
For years and years now, my campus has been plagued by phishers who send emails to colleagues that are purportedly from the department chair, asking if it's OK to call and if so, what's their cell #? This has absolutely tripped up some of my colleagues. One of these scams lstarted running again just today, this time with a direct text to my colleague's personal cell. We caught it because he came to my office and I said, "...huh?" ("Wait, that's not your number," he said. "And I wouldn't identify myself with my full name, either," said I.) These are absolutely the kind of emails a chair might send, which is why they are so deadly unless you are looking closely at the origin address or the cell #. (As he was not the only recipient, I sent out a weary email to our listserv.)
posted by thomas j wise at 5:56 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
posted by thomas j wise at 5:56 PM on February 15 [6 favorites]
My bank in the UK has a whole spiel that they go through about detecting fraud: has anyone pressured you to move this money? Has anyone coached you on what to say? Were you told that your money wasn't safe in the bank? It's kind of good that they do this, kind of bad that I have to go through it over an international call every time.
Back when I answered the phone, the most distressing scam attempt I had was the "distraught pregnant teenage daughter in hospital/jail needs $XXXX". I've had this twice, roughly 15 years apart, and both calls had the same recording of a very anguished young woman yelling “Daddy …!”. Given that I'm not exactly dad material, it's easy to shrug off, but the setup has stayed with me.
posted by scruss at 7:10 PM on February 15 [2 favorites]
Back when I answered the phone, the most distressing scam attempt I had was the "distraught pregnant teenage daughter in hospital/jail needs $XXXX". I've had this twice, roughly 15 years apart, and both calls had the same recording of a very anguished young woman yelling “Daddy …!”. Given that I'm not exactly dad material, it's easy to shrug off, but the setup has stayed with me.
posted by scruss at 7:10 PM on February 15 [2 favorites]
But if you do a "show original" on the offending email, it always includes the e-signature of the security consultant.
Ha yes! Almost immediately someone had posted to the Slack IT channel, “uh, is this legit?” And someone else had gone into the headers and found that one of the relay domains was something like “spamandscam.ru”. What a handful of people inexplicably took away from this was that it was a legit scam attempt and not from a security consultant.
posted by supercres at 7:35 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]
Ha yes! Almost immediately someone had posted to the Slack IT channel, “uh, is this legit?” And someone else had gone into the headers and found that one of the relay domains was something like “spamandscam.ru”. What a handful of people inexplicably took away from this was that it was a legit scam attempt and not from a security consultant.
posted by supercres at 7:35 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]
It’s fascinating to see the shift of the telephone from being how you talk to whoever is in a room to being a personal data device you never answer.
Has any other technology inverted, on so many fronts, so completely?
Yeah, as I think I mentioned once in the blue before, we saw a huge shift in attitudes towards cell phones around the turn of the millennium: in late 1995 the incoming Tory provincial government in Ontario was justly mocked for many "fiscally-prudent initiatives" -- one of which was ending a longtime programme that patrolled provincial highways during blizzards to aid stranded motorists and cut back on snowplowing because any stranded driver would simply use their car phone to call for help (phone costs were in the low four digits then for the cheapest models, and for comparison, minimum wage then was $6.70 an hour); in 2006 a Vancouver windstorm left an intermittently homeless man named Don Seguin was trapped by the branches of a fallen tree for six days before he recalled that he had an old, nearly depleted cellphone in his bags and he called 911.
I recall thinking that it was astonishing that in a decade or so, cell phones had fallen from a status symbol for doctors and lawyers and hedge fund managers to the kind of thing that homeless guys have and forget they have them. And their roles are still changing now.
I think a better cartoonist than I could produce some image riffing on the iconic ascent of man picture. Of course, save for the parodies, that image always puts modern humans at the last position, like it's all been leading to us. Sure.
Likewise, I don't think we've reached the final role of cell phones culturally yet.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:40 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]
Has any other technology inverted, on so many fronts, so completely?
Yeah, as I think I mentioned once in the blue before, we saw a huge shift in attitudes towards cell phones around the turn of the millennium: in late 1995 the incoming Tory provincial government in Ontario was justly mocked for many "fiscally-prudent initiatives" -- one of which was ending a longtime programme that patrolled provincial highways during blizzards to aid stranded motorists and cut back on snowplowing because any stranded driver would simply use their car phone to call for help (phone costs were in the low four digits then for the cheapest models, and for comparison, minimum wage then was $6.70 an hour); in 2006 a Vancouver windstorm left an intermittently homeless man named Don Seguin was trapped by the branches of a fallen tree for six days before he recalled that he had an old, nearly depleted cellphone in his bags and he called 911.
I recall thinking that it was astonishing that in a decade or so, cell phones had fallen from a status symbol for doctors and lawyers and hedge fund managers to the kind of thing that homeless guys have and forget they have them. And their roles are still changing now.
I think a better cartoonist than I could produce some image riffing on the iconic ascent of man picture. Of course, save for the parodies, that image always puts modern humans at the last position, like it's all been leading to us. Sure.
Likewise, I don't think we've reached the final role of cell phones culturally yet.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:40 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]
I did pick up on one of those "your Amazon account shows a purchase of a Macbook and two iPads" calls a few days ago. Thankfully my spidey senses kicked in after a few minutes and I hung up and went to actual Amazon for a gut check, but they had my real address and read it out to me! It seemed very convincing at first. Anyway, I had no idea that was where it was going. Damn.
The other time I almost got scammed it was one of those "thank you for being a valued Verizon customer, click here for your end-of-year gift" texts (because Verizon really did used to have little monthly rewards), but the link didn't load and then a few hours later my boyfriend's mom was complaining about these scams and I went oh and promptly deleted the text.
posted by capricorn at 7:56 PM on February 15 [1 favorite]
The other time I almost got scammed it was one of those "thank you for being a valued Verizon customer, click here for your end-of-year gift" texts (because Verizon really did used to have little monthly rewards), but the link didn't load and then a few hours later my boyfriend's mom was complaining about these scams and I went oh and promptly deleted the text.
posted by capricorn at 7:56 PM on February 15 [1 favorite]
I called a family member I hadn't spoken to in maybe 15 years the other day because I got a missed call from them. Turns out I did, it was just weeks earlier and my recent list was just scrolled down. Like me he assumes all calls are spam but he actually answered anyway and he was extremely skeptical I was his grandson. Apparently he had received a call before about me going to jail or something and asking for money. I've never been to jail or asked a random relative for money, so I was glad he was skeptical.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:07 PM on February 15 [2 favorites]
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:07 PM on February 15 [2 favorites]
I know the pious MeFi response here is the one given by many above that this could happen to anyone and there but for the grace of God and we should not, but...
It's not piety. I've spent the past ten-plus years working on various kinds of fraud (usually not this direct) and follow it professionally, so to speak. It's just truth. Anybody can get got.
Now, this one is pretty extreme and could've been defeated by this person having had the foresight to rehearse to herself in advance, as everyone should: if I'm feeling rushed, that's a bad sign. I should just stop and talk to someone I trust. Nothing bad will happen in the course of 24 hours if I don't pay up. Anyone trying to make me think otherwise is probably scamming me. But, as someone else noted above, someone like a mainstream personal-finance columnist probably has an unnaturally strong faith in "the system" to be played upon. Such people primarily deal in repeating conventional wisdom and have an innocent underlying faith that hard work will be rewarded by a just world.
posted by praemunire at 10:04 PM on February 15 [12 favorites]
It's not piety. I've spent the past ten-plus years working on various kinds of fraud (usually not this direct) and follow it professionally, so to speak. It's just truth. Anybody can get got.
Now, this one is pretty extreme and could've been defeated by this person having had the foresight to rehearse to herself in advance, as everyone should: if I'm feeling rushed, that's a bad sign. I should just stop and talk to someone I trust. Nothing bad will happen in the course of 24 hours if I don't pay up. Anyone trying to make me think otherwise is probably scamming me. But, as someone else noted above, someone like a mainstream personal-finance columnist probably has an unnaturally strong faith in "the system" to be played upon. Such people primarily deal in repeating conventional wisdom and have an innocent underlying faith that hard work will be rewarded by a just world.
posted by praemunire at 10:04 PM on February 15 [12 favorites]
Teach your children.
Growing up, I’d watch Law and Order, or whatever popular police procedural, with my parents. My dad would quiz me: “What’s our family motto?” The answer: “Never give it up.”
posted by bluloo at 11:36 PM on February 15 [10 favorites]
Growing up, I’d watch Law and Order, or whatever popular police procedural, with my parents. My dad would quiz me: “What’s our family motto?” The answer: “Never give it up.”
posted by bluloo at 11:36 PM on February 15 [10 favorites]
It's not piety. I've spent the past ten-plus years working on various kinds of fraud (usually not this direct) and follow it professionally, so to speak. It's just truth. Anybody can get got.
I can't. I have a foolproof defense: I have no money and no access to credit.
posted by Dysk at 12:51 AM on February 16 [4 favorites]
I can't. I have a foolproof defense: I have no money and no access to credit.
posted by Dysk at 12:51 AM on February 16 [4 favorites]
And while this is harder to quantify — how do I even put it? — I’m not someone who loses her head. My mother-in-law has described me as even-keeled; my own mom has called me “maddeningly rational.” I am listed as an emergency contact for several friends — and their kids. I vote, floss, cook, and exercise. In other words, I’m not a person who panics under pressure and falls for a conspiracy involving drug smuggling, money laundering, and CIA officers at my door. Until, suddenly, I was.
This is all very revealing but I can't help thinking that the reasons given above are not why she shouldn't have been caught by this but, on the contrary, why she did fall for it.
As I was reading the story I thought: I wouldn't have had the stamina to go through this. My anxiety levels would have been through the roof and I would have been close to fainting. I would have just said: "I can't continue. Let's go through this later. I really need to stop." and hung up the phone and that probably would have saved me. I mean my own mother hides things from me (usually misadventures she has in the hottest part of Mexico Cartel country while visiting family) and says "I'm not going to share the details because I know you are sensitive" and I sort of nod and move on because I know she is saving me from a panic attack.
But this woman didn't 'panic under pressure' like she says. She actually calmly kept moving forward with doing what she felt she had to do to save her family, or so she believed. The scammers hooked into this and manufactured a fake crisis and then found someone willing to see that crisis through.
Under the right circumstances, I would have wanted this woman on my side. But in this case that fighting spirit of hers was what was hijacked and what made her the perfect foil.
posted by vacapinta at 2:50 AM on February 16 [18 favorites]
This is all very revealing but I can't help thinking that the reasons given above are not why she shouldn't have been caught by this but, on the contrary, why she did fall for it.
As I was reading the story I thought: I wouldn't have had the stamina to go through this. My anxiety levels would have been through the roof and I would have been close to fainting. I would have just said: "I can't continue. Let's go through this later. I really need to stop." and hung up the phone and that probably would have saved me. I mean my own mother hides things from me (usually misadventures she has in the hottest part of Mexico Cartel country while visiting family) and says "I'm not going to share the details because I know you are sensitive" and I sort of nod and move on because I know she is saving me from a panic attack.
But this woman didn't 'panic under pressure' like she says. She actually calmly kept moving forward with doing what she felt she had to do to save her family, or so she believed. The scammers hooked into this and manufactured a fake crisis and then found someone willing to see that crisis through.
Under the right circumstances, I would have wanted this woman on my side. But in this case that fighting spirit of hers was what was hijacked and what made her the perfect foil.
posted by vacapinta at 2:50 AM on February 16 [18 favorites]
I got scammed by a "you need to pay the fee for your website" that appeared to be from the right company, even though I knew I'd just made a multi-year payment. I was dispirited and compliant, so I sent out the information. And then I knew I should contact my bank, but (without going into details) I got a legitimate phone call from people who wanted to talk about a stressful topic and I didn't have the energy to pry myself loose. Mercifully, my bank blocked the transaction which would have emptied my bank account.
I do answer my phone, and it's probably a good thing because my medical provider (Oak Street Health) doesn't identify themselves on their phone number. They're otherwise fairly good.
I'm going to throw in a little blame for the scammers in the middle of this discussion of to what extent people can protect themselves and organizations can protect them. What proportion of the population are scamming? One in a thousand? One in five hundred or so? Some of them are trapped, but a great many aren't.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:04 AM on February 16 [3 favorites]
I do answer my phone, and it's probably a good thing because my medical provider (Oak Street Health) doesn't identify themselves on their phone number. They're otherwise fairly good.
I'm going to throw in a little blame for the scammers in the middle of this discussion of to what extent people can protect themselves and organizations can protect them. What proportion of the population are scamming? One in a thousand? One in five hundred or so? Some of them are trapped, but a great many aren't.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:04 AM on February 16 [3 favorites]
When I’ve told people this story, most of them say the same thing: You don’t seem like the type of person this would happen to. What they mean is that I’m not senile, or hysterical, or a rube. But these stereotypes are actually false. Younger adults — Gen Z, millennials, and Gen X — are 34 percent more likely to report losing money to fraud compared with those over 60, according to a recent report from the Federal Trade Commission.
This stat doesn't tell me that younger generations are more susceptible to fraud, it tells me that they're more likely to report it instead of covering it up or being completely unaware that it even happened.
posted by FatherDagon at 6:11 AM on February 16 [22 favorites]
This stat doesn't tell me that younger generations are more susceptible to fraud, it tells me that they're more likely to report it instead of covering it up or being completely unaware that it even happened.
posted by FatherDagon at 6:11 AM on February 16 [22 favorites]
Younger adults — Gen Z, millennials, and Gen X
Don't mean to be too pedantic here, but this line caught me. As a member of Gen X, let me tell you: we're not "younger adults"; we're in our fifties, for cryin' out loud.
posted by grubi at 6:43 AM on February 16 [17 favorites]
Don't mean to be too pedantic here, but this line caught me. As a member of Gen X, let me tell you: we're not "younger adults"; we're in our fifties, for cryin' out loud.
posted by grubi at 6:43 AM on February 16 [17 favorites]
If you ever read David Maurer’s The Big Con, it’s funny how the medium of the scam has changed but the steps are the same.
- Puttingthe mark up (finding the victim)
- Playing the con (story about the frauds and crimes)
-Roping the mark ( switching to another scammer to continue the con)
- Telling them the tale/ Giving the convincer (spouting all of the personal info to show that they must be who they say they are)
- Giving them the breakdown (coming up with the $50,000 she said she could “put away” while this was being sorted out)
- Putting them on the send (off to the bank to withdraw the money)
- Taking off the touch (involving a courier or some other person being scammed or an unwitting dupe to collect the cash via a shoebox pushed through a car window)
-Blowing them off (the stalling calls to the “assigned CIA officer” who is conveniently unavailable)
The last step from the book is “putting in the fix”, paying off cops or prosecutors to look the other way. This is probably the part that got even easier in modern days as scammers in foreign jurisdictions are beyond the reach of US law enforcement, not to mention that the cops aren’t going to do much more than scribble “some dipshit gave fifty grand to a stranger in a shoebox” in their notebook and go back to playing candy crush.
posted by dr_dank at 6:44 AM on February 16 [12 favorites]
- Puttingthe mark up (finding the victim)
- Playing the con (story about the frauds and crimes)
-Roping the mark ( switching to another scammer to continue the con)
- Telling them the tale/ Giving the convincer (spouting all of the personal info to show that they must be who they say they are)
- Giving them the breakdown (coming up with the $50,000 she said she could “put away” while this was being sorted out)
- Putting them on the send (off to the bank to withdraw the money)
- Taking off the touch (involving a courier or some other person being scammed or an unwitting dupe to collect the cash via a shoebox pushed through a car window)
-Blowing them off (the stalling calls to the “assigned CIA officer” who is conveniently unavailable)
The last step from the book is “putting in the fix”, paying off cops or prosecutors to look the other way. This is probably the part that got even easier in modern days as scammers in foreign jurisdictions are beyond the reach of US law enforcement, not to mention that the cops aren’t going to do much more than scribble “some dipshit gave fifty grand to a stranger in a shoebox” in their notebook and go back to playing candy crush.
posted by dr_dank at 6:44 AM on February 16 [12 favorites]
As a member of Gen X, let me tell you: we're not "younger adults"; we're in our fifties, for cryin' out loud.
Yeah. Younger than my parents, but that’s about it. I’m not just pushing fifty, I’m hanging on for dear life.
I don’t feel old, but I realize I’m older than some of my grandparents were when I was in kindergarten.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:02 AM on February 16 [10 favorites]
Yeah. Younger than my parents, but that’s about it. I’m not just pushing fifty, I’m hanging on for dear life.
I don’t feel old, but I realize I’m older than some of my grandparents were when I was in kindergarten.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:02 AM on February 16 [10 favorites]
I do believe anybody can get got. I absolutely have some pressure point or blind spot that could be exploited, sure.
But this sounds so much like the plot to a middling airport paperback that you'd leave half-read in the seat-back pocket that I can't believe she'd show her whole ass by writing this article. None of it makes any sense. There are well-crafted scams, and then there's whatever this is.
I did go to the bank yesterday for the first time in a long time because I needed a big stack of small bills, though, and it was pretty awesome to have hundreds of something. Maybe I'll go get a shoebox full of singles to keep around the house for petty cash. Or to surreptitiously hand to my wife through the car window.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:06 AM on February 16 [10 favorites]
But this sounds so much like the plot to a middling airport paperback that you'd leave half-read in the seat-back pocket that I can't believe she'd show her whole ass by writing this article. None of it makes any sense. There are well-crafted scams, and then there's whatever this is.
I did go to the bank yesterday for the first time in a long time because I needed a big stack of small bills, though, and it was pretty awesome to have hundreds of something. Maybe I'll go get a shoebox full of singles to keep around the house for petty cash. Or to surreptitiously hand to my wife through the car window.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:06 AM on February 16 [10 favorites]
I paid $14,000 in cash to the people who built my driveway, concrete path, fencing, and my garden beds, so withdrawing that amount can be pretty routine for banks.
Uhm, ok. Good for you. I hope it was cash on completion of work and that you got a receipt because personally I'd feel a little nervous about handing over that much untraceable cash to a contractor who could bail on me, not to mention how stressed out I'd be worrying about the myriad of ways I could get irreparably separated from that cash just carrying it home from the bank.
If I were in a situation where I was attempting to withdraw my life's savings in order to pay a scammer that's been playing psychological mind-games with me, I think I'd appreciate the bank adding just a little friction. If you're that concerned about the bank keeping you from "your" money, might I suggest gold? Or maybe bitcoin?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:17 AM on February 16 [3 favorites]
Uhm, ok. Good for you. I hope it was cash on completion of work and that you got a receipt because personally I'd feel a little nervous about handing over that much untraceable cash to a contractor who could bail on me, not to mention how stressed out I'd be worrying about the myriad of ways I could get irreparably separated from that cash just carrying it home from the bank.
If I were in a situation where I was attempting to withdraw my life's savings in order to pay a scammer that's been playing psychological mind-games with me, I think I'd appreciate the bank adding just a little friction. If you're that concerned about the bank keeping you from "your" money, might I suggest gold? Or maybe bitcoin?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:17 AM on February 16 [3 favorites]
I got scammed once, while trying to buy a car online. This was in the early 2000s, so a while ago, but I contacted the person and then they said they needed it shipped from overseas, which didn't really phase me since I bought tons of records (trance was a thing then) from the UK. I sent them like $2500 via western union, and then WU called me up and basically told me I got scammed, and refunded most of my money. They told me to report it to the police and FBI, and gave me numbers, and I called the numbers they gave me. No one at either ever answered. The movie Taken was new then, so I had a temporary fantasy about becoming a rogue agent to find them, but then I figured it was a like a 2000s Mercedes A class, so probably not worth that. Still sucked.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:27 AM on February 16 [3 favorites]
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:27 AM on February 16 [3 favorites]
Oh yeah, I also reported it to the major online car site, they also didn't care that someone has almost completely spoofed their website. No matter what people say, the web sucked then in terms of security.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:29 AM on February 16 [1 favorite]
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:29 AM on February 16 [1 favorite]
Why didn't the bank intervene at this point? A regular customer suddenly shows up looking nervous and asks to withdraw $50,000, a hefty 5/8ths of her total savings account, in cash? How is this not a red flag that crimes may be afoot?
I'm actually surprised they had that much cash on hand. As most all transactions are electronics banks usually don't have anywhere near that amount because it's useless to have that much on hand day to day and security wise it's better to have as little cash as possible.
posted by jmauro at 8:27 AM on February 16 [3 favorites]
I'm actually surprised they had that much cash on hand. As most all transactions are electronics banks usually don't have anywhere near that amount because it's useless to have that much on hand day to day and security wise it's better to have as little cash as possible.
posted by jmauro at 8:27 AM on February 16 [3 favorites]
I wonder what bank she uses and if they see her as a special customer to be taken care of, no questions asked. For context, her husband worked in private banking before going into the finance side of the housing org, and her father-in-law appears to be quite loaded, as in multiple cultural institutions have stuff named after him.
posted by smelendez at 8:31 AM on February 16 [15 favorites]
posted by smelendez at 8:31 AM on February 16 [15 favorites]
once googling for a support telephone number for HP for help with her printer and getting, as the first result, a scammer's number.
No, that was their business model, it just felt like a scam.
tbf, you'd probably lose less money and get better support from the scam link. HP has completely embraced enshittification as their corporate philosophy. My company literally BEGS our customers not to buy anything from HP and suggest that they immediately ship back anything they get from HP.
One recent incident pretty much sums up HP these days: customer buys HP printer without consulting us, calls us and asks us to set up a time to install and configure printer. We tell her multiple times to just return it and buy something from a reputable brand. Well, she doesn't want to do that, just wants to set up an install. Ok, fine, we go onsite. A good part of a day and $1k of our labor later, the printer still doesn't work correctly and, from what we can tell from online forums, is never going to work correctly. HP's response is pretty much what we'd expect: lol, sorry, we designed that poorly and it's never going to work, sorry sucker, xxx ooo, please buy more crap from us, love HP.
So this customer spent $400 on an HP printer that will never work correctly, spent $1k on our labor to get it working which failed, and then spent more money shipping the flaming dumpster fire back and buying the printer we suggested initially.
It honestly wouldn't surprise me if HP specifically engineered their inkjet ink to dry out and clog their $200 printers after like 24 hours, thus requiring $350 work of replacement ink carts.
posted by ensign_ricky at 9:16 AM on February 16 [7 favorites]
smelendez: I wonder what bank she uses and if they see her as a special customer to be taken care of, no questions asked.
The article mentions going to the bank and dealing with a teller behind thick glass, suggesting a fairly ordinary account with this bank. Real private banking is a high end boutique experience. Nicely appointed offices, specially trained staff, sometimes their own entrances/floors. A high end customer wouldn’t be forced to consort with the plebes under glass like the other plebes.
The comments on the article fill in the gaps that she is old school low key wealthy, so I’m sure there are other accounts where that kind of service would apply.
posted by dr_dank at 9:25 AM on February 16 [1 favorite]
The article mentions going to the bank and dealing with a teller behind thick glass, suggesting a fairly ordinary account with this bank. Real private banking is a high end boutique experience. Nicely appointed offices, specially trained staff, sometimes their own entrances/floors. A high end customer wouldn’t be forced to consort with the plebes under glass like the other plebes.
The comments on the article fill in the gaps that she is old school low key wealthy, so I’m sure there are other accounts where that kind of service would apply.
posted by dr_dank at 9:25 AM on February 16 [1 favorite]
But this sounds so much like the plot to a middling airport paperback that you'd leave half-read in the seat-back pocket that I can't believe she'd show her whole ass by writing this article.
Extreme nonsense can sometimes have a counterintuitive effect, a "you can't make this stuff up"/"if you were going to lie, why would you pick such a wild story???" valence. I know someone whose parasitic/abusive boyfriend told her for years that he'd die if she didn't do x/y/z ludicrous thing, and I think the very extremity of it all paralyzed her common sense completely, even though everyone around her was like, um, no, he will not die if you don't pause when entering a room so he can look away to avoid the distress seeing you would impose on his nervous system.
Also not sure why you think this constitutes "showing her ass." She's a columnist, something bad happened to her, she wants to use it to help other people avoid getting scammed, especially those smug or arrogant enough to think it can't happen to them.
posted by praemunire at 9:26 AM on February 16 [6 favorites]
Extreme nonsense can sometimes have a counterintuitive effect, a "you can't make this stuff up"/"if you were going to lie, why would you pick such a wild story???" valence. I know someone whose parasitic/abusive boyfriend told her for years that he'd die if she didn't do x/y/z ludicrous thing, and I think the very extremity of it all paralyzed her common sense completely, even though everyone around her was like, um, no, he will not die if you don't pause when entering a room so he can look away to avoid the distress seeing you would impose on his nervous system.
Also not sure why you think this constitutes "showing her ass." She's a columnist, something bad happened to her, she wants to use it to help other people avoid getting scammed, especially those smug or arrogant enough to think it can't happen to them.
posted by praemunire at 9:26 AM on February 16 [6 favorites]
My father worked at Seattle Public Library, at the front desk managing the Humanities and Foreign Language collections. This was at the time when Reagan shut down a lot of mental hospitals, promising that The Market would Provide help somehow. So we had some stalkers who seemingly picked him at random (possibly because he spoke Russian, which fed into a lot of people's paranoia), and I remember each phone number we had from each police-instigated number change.
I was raised to always assume that anyone who called me was a fraudster, unless I knew them personally by voice. I was instructed that if anyone called claiming to be the police, I was to ask for the officer's name, precinct, and extension, at which point I would promise to call them back and hang up without getting approval. I once actually did call up the SPD and ring through to the desk of the person who called me, and I remember him being rather impressed.
So every time someone who rang me up asks me for personal details, I always say "But you called me!" I always hang up and dial the fraud number on the back of the card. I always open the plausible-enough-to-check mail as inert text files. I always trust that the bank has the same security model I would use, and dig into DNS and whois lookups when they don't.
I hope I never face an adversary like the one in this post, but if I do I hope my instincts don't fail me.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 9:51 AM on February 16 [8 favorites]
I was raised to always assume that anyone who called me was a fraudster, unless I knew them personally by voice. I was instructed that if anyone called claiming to be the police, I was to ask for the officer's name, precinct, and extension, at which point I would promise to call them back and hang up without getting approval. I once actually did call up the SPD and ring through to the desk of the person who called me, and I remember him being rather impressed.
So every time someone who rang me up asks me for personal details, I always say "But you called me!" I always hang up and dial the fraud number on the back of the card. I always open the plausible-enough-to-check mail as inert text files. I always trust that the bank has the same security model I would use, and dig into DNS and whois lookups when they don't.
I hope I never face an adversary like the one in this post, but if I do I hope my instincts don't fail me.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 9:51 AM on February 16 [8 favorites]
But this sounds so much like the plot to a middling airport paperback that you'd leave half-read in the seat-back pocket that I can't believe she'd show her whole ass by writing this article. None of it makes any sense. There are well-crafted scams, and then there's whatever this is.
You have the comfort of reading about it after the fact, at your leisure, having already read the headline "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam." So, yeah, to you now, reading that over the course of five or ten minutes, all of it is obvious right from 'since when does Amazon phone people'.
But much like people who know every answer on Jeopardy until they get under the studio lights, the experience of receiving those phone calls is different from reading about them. The first call is meant to seems quite reasonable and then the levels of detail and crazy amp up from there in a very deliberate way. That is, in fact, a well-crafted scam.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:52 AM on February 16 [11 favorites]
You have the comfort of reading about it after the fact, at your leisure, having already read the headline "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam." So, yeah, to you now, reading that over the course of five or ten minutes, all of it is obvious right from 'since when does Amazon phone people'.
But much like people who know every answer on Jeopardy until they get under the studio lights, the experience of receiving those phone calls is different from reading about them. The first call is meant to seems quite reasonable and then the levels of detail and crazy amp up from there in a very deliberate way. That is, in fact, a well-crafted scam.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:52 AM on February 16 [11 favorites]
I have a lot of empathy for anyone caught by a scam and have no illusions that I'm forever safe from one.
But the snarky side of me immediately thought that a personal finance journalist who came from wealth probably also believes/has written if your employer doesn't pay you a living wage you can just cut down on the avocado toast so of course this scam seemed feasible to her.
posted by misskaz at 9:55 AM on February 16 [12 favorites]
But the snarky side of me immediately thought that a personal finance journalist who came from wealth probably also believes/has written if your employer doesn't pay you a living wage you can just cut down on the avocado toast so of course this scam seemed feasible to her.
posted by misskaz at 9:55 AM on February 16 [12 favorites]
The thing about scams and cons (and any other form of motivated deception, really) is that the attack surface is "literally anything you might extend trust about".
Every point on the spectrum of reaction to a scam story—from the empathetic "everyone might fall for one" to the disbelieving "how could someone fall for THAT, though"—is a reflection of the idea that there's an appropriate amount of trust to extend to any given circumstance. But what that amount is is something we argue with each other about, in general and in the details, while still agreeing (to the point of not needing to even say it) that the appropriate amount of trust is neither "fully and unconditionally" or "absolutely none". We see someone who trusts literally everything as a helpless child; we see someone who trusts literally nothing as an off-the-deep-end paranoiac. Neither can function in society in any reasonable way.
So there's a dial there, and we can argue about how much to turn it on a personal or situational basis, but there's no turning all one way or the other. For every person and every situation, there's always a capacity for some amount of skepticism and there's always a capacity for some amount of trust.
All a scam needs is to find one region of trust and get behind enemy lines from there. All it needs is to find that entry point for some subset of targets. And targets are cheap and plentiful, and even for the very skeptical the attack surface is so broad that there are a lot of entry points. And once you're behind the wall, whatever energy your target is putting into watching the entrances is energy they're not spending looking for an inside man, so their defensive/skeptical instincts can end up working against them.
It's unreasonable to expect people to be consistently on guard against scams, because it's asymmetrical warfare. But we're also often unreasonably critical of both ourselves and others, because it's terrifying to really accept that you're one bad moment, one unattended gap, away from being on the bad end of an unfair fight. Skepticism is both a life skill and a story we tell ourselves to cover over the fear and shame of falling for something we fully recognize other people fall for regularly.
posted by cortex at 9:58 AM on February 16 [15 favorites]
Every point on the spectrum of reaction to a scam story—from the empathetic "everyone might fall for one" to the disbelieving "how could someone fall for THAT, though"—is a reflection of the idea that there's an appropriate amount of trust to extend to any given circumstance. But what that amount is is something we argue with each other about, in general and in the details, while still agreeing (to the point of not needing to even say it) that the appropriate amount of trust is neither "fully and unconditionally" or "absolutely none". We see someone who trusts literally everything as a helpless child; we see someone who trusts literally nothing as an off-the-deep-end paranoiac. Neither can function in society in any reasonable way.
So there's a dial there, and we can argue about how much to turn it on a personal or situational basis, but there's no turning all one way or the other. For every person and every situation, there's always a capacity for some amount of skepticism and there's always a capacity for some amount of trust.
All a scam needs is to find one region of trust and get behind enemy lines from there. All it needs is to find that entry point for some subset of targets. And targets are cheap and plentiful, and even for the very skeptical the attack surface is so broad that there are a lot of entry points. And once you're behind the wall, whatever energy your target is putting into watching the entrances is energy they're not spending looking for an inside man, so their defensive/skeptical instincts can end up working against them.
It's unreasonable to expect people to be consistently on guard against scams, because it's asymmetrical warfare. But we're also often unreasonably critical of both ourselves and others, because it's terrifying to really accept that you're one bad moment, one unattended gap, away from being on the bad end of an unfair fight. Skepticism is both a life skill and a story we tell ourselves to cover over the fear and shame of falling for something we fully recognize other people fall for regularly.
posted by cortex at 9:58 AM on February 16 [15 favorites]
I'm a cybersecurity professional, and I gotta say, being in security for more than 15 minutes cured me of the "they should've known better". Some of it is definitely "we have to succeed every time; they only have to succeed once". Most of it is... the more we go with "[that person] should've known better", the dramatically less likely it is that people will report scams they may have fallen for. (This goes for anything security-related that involves users. I wouldn't snark on a person's laptop getting stolen for the same reason.)
posted by nonethefewer at 10:31 AM on February 16 [12 favorites]
posted by nonethefewer at 10:31 AM on February 16 [12 favorites]
Two minutes into reading that article I was thinking it was fake, the author made it up. If she blew the money on something, this Walter White worthy story would make for a good coverup. I wonder if the publisher even verified the withdrawal of funds.
posted by Sophont at 10:56 AM on February 16 [5 favorites]
posted by Sophont at 10:56 AM on February 16 [5 favorites]
Once around 1994 or so I posted on Usenet about wanting to buy an Apple Newton and someone messaged me in IRC or whatever the terminal equivalent was and I sent them $100. They then mocked me. I tracked down their ID and contacted everyone who had hired them to work on a website and told them they were employing a criminal. I remember the shame. The shame is what keeps you quiet.
Also I need to rewatch The Spanish Prisoner, an underrated gem with Steve Martin in a non-comedic role, and Ricky Jay. David Mamet without the swear words. What an odd, delightful movie.
posted by mecran01 at 11:22 AM on February 16 [4 favorites]
Also I need to rewatch The Spanish Prisoner, an underrated gem with Steve Martin in a non-comedic role, and Ricky Jay. David Mamet without the swear words. What an odd, delightful movie.
posted by mecran01 at 11:22 AM on February 16 [4 favorites]
Also I need to rewatch The Spanish Prisoner, an underrated gem with Steve Martin in a non-comedic role, and Ricky Jay. David Mamet without the swear words. What an odd, delightful movie.
One of the very first movies I ever bought on DVD. I made my wife watch it on our first date, lo those many years ago. One of my absolute favorites. There are so many great little quotable lines. Dog my cats!
posted by kbanas at 11:30 AM on February 16 [1 favorite]
One of the very first movies I ever bought on DVD. I made my wife watch it on our first date, lo those many years ago. One of my absolute favorites. There are so many great little quotable lines. Dog my cats!
posted by kbanas at 11:30 AM on February 16 [1 favorite]
and the main banking room (where in days gone past there would have been a half-dozen tellers) now had removed all of the desks and chairs and now has a bunch of, er, beanbag-chair-sized pillows strewn about for, I guess, the comfort of people waiting for an appointment in one of the adjoining offices.
And yet new bank branches keep popping up all over the place, mostly where beloved diners or bookstores used to be. I don't understand it.
The comments on the article fill in the gaps that she is old school low key wealthy, so I’m sure there are other accounts where that kind of service would apply.
Yeah, sorry, while it sucks to be scammed, I just couldn't get past the "boo fucking hoo I wish I had $50,000 lying around" aspect to the article. I'm not familiar with The Cut, is it like the tone-deaf NYT, geared towards the moneyed? Sophont is right.
posted by Melismata at 11:52 AM on February 16 [4 favorites]
And yet new bank branches keep popping up all over the place, mostly where beloved diners or bookstores used to be. I don't understand it.
The comments on the article fill in the gaps that she is old school low key wealthy, so I’m sure there are other accounts where that kind of service would apply.
Yeah, sorry, while it sucks to be scammed, I just couldn't get past the "boo fucking hoo I wish I had $50,000 lying around" aspect to the article. I'm not familiar with The Cut, is it like the tone-deaf NYT, geared towards the moneyed? Sophont is right.
posted by Melismata at 11:52 AM on February 16 [4 favorites]
The comments on the article fill in the gaps that she is old school low key wealthy, so I’m sure there are other accounts where that kind of service would apply.
I thought you all were exaggerating, but a $4m home, Ivy League degree, related to Eleanor Roosevelt, and at 39 years old, and husband works for a non-profit (according to mr_piss - the future is odd). Her yearly property taxes are probably higher than $50k.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:16 PM on February 16 [9 favorites]
I thought you all were exaggerating, but a $4m home, Ivy League degree, related to Eleanor Roosevelt, and at 39 years old, and husband works for a non-profit (according to mr_piss - the future is odd). Her yearly property taxes are probably higher than $50k.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:16 PM on February 16 [9 favorites]
I mean, it obviously affected her much much less than it would've many people I know and love (or me!), but it still sucks to get hustled out of $50K under scary circumstances. She probably should be paying a lot more in taxes, but that's a separate issue.
posted by praemunire at 12:39 PM on February 16 [1 favorite]
posted by praemunire at 12:39 PM on February 16 [1 favorite]
I slept on this, but I'm going to post it.
In 2017, the Equifax breach was shocking. The majority of the adult population of the United States had their names, addresses, social security numbers and in many cases, drivers license numbers and even payment information stolen. It's been almost 7 years, and it's almost been forgotten. As I'm sure you're all aware, there have been additional breaches since then.
But with this article, and Cory Doctorow's recent article on how he was scammed, there's a commonality, which is that someone called who seemed to have more information than they should and they were trusted since they had that information. An SSN, an address, the name of a bank they do business with, these things we all assume to be private.
Here's the thing. Those things are no longer private. With the number of breaches that have happened, whether with credit bureaus or with banks or with the stores we do with business with, and have continued to happen again and again, our banking relationships are not private. None of us should assume that, if someone calls us with information that we might consider personal, that the caller is the sole holder of that information. Those who claim to know something personal about us, those things were stolen, or possibly gathered, or they were obtained years in advance of that moment in which you get the call.
My own mother has been prey to these calls, and in our case, it was only her instinct to put the scammers on hold and to call me to express her frustration that kept her accounts from being drained. I implore you - no matter what urgency they employ to get you to stay on the line, hang up. Call in to your bank, or even the FBI, even the CIA, to somehow find the secret Amazon phone number, to express skepticism and check in, even when it's real tough to do so.
posted by eschatfische at 12:42 PM on February 16 [21 favorites]
In 2017, the Equifax breach was shocking. The majority of the adult population of the United States had their names, addresses, social security numbers and in many cases, drivers license numbers and even payment information stolen. It's been almost 7 years, and it's almost been forgotten. As I'm sure you're all aware, there have been additional breaches since then.
But with this article, and Cory Doctorow's recent article on how he was scammed, there's a commonality, which is that someone called who seemed to have more information than they should and they were trusted since they had that information. An SSN, an address, the name of a bank they do business with, these things we all assume to be private.
Here's the thing. Those things are no longer private. With the number of breaches that have happened, whether with credit bureaus or with banks or with the stores we do with business with, and have continued to happen again and again, our banking relationships are not private. None of us should assume that, if someone calls us with information that we might consider personal, that the caller is the sole holder of that information. Those who claim to know something personal about us, those things were stolen, or possibly gathered, or they were obtained years in advance of that moment in which you get the call.
My own mother has been prey to these calls, and in our case, it was only her instinct to put the scammers on hold and to call me to express her frustration that kept her accounts from being drained. I implore you - no matter what urgency they employ to get you to stay on the line, hang up. Call in to your bank, or even the FBI, even the CIA, to somehow find the secret Amazon phone number, to express skepticism and check in, even when it's real tough to do so.
posted by eschatfische at 12:42 PM on February 16 [21 favorites]
I get a lot of calls on my cell phone from US Customs... LOL
"Send me a certified letter please". Click
Did get scammed once on ebay, "the winning bidder backed out..." email. And I ignored what are now the obvious red flags, (it was long time ago before we knew what the red flags were, hint: Western Union)
posted by Windopaene at 1:45 PM on February 16 [3 favorites]
"Send me a certified letter please". Click
Did get scammed once on ebay, "the winning bidder backed out..." email. And I ignored what are now the obvious red flags, (it was long time ago before we knew what the red flags were, hint: Western Union)
posted by Windopaene at 1:45 PM on February 16 [3 favorites]
I think the thing that stood out to me about this story is also that the class of the targets is also what makes them gullible to these scams.
I'm also in the camp of "if this is even true, I'm not particularly sympathetic." But yeah, there's def little point in scamming poor people, who are at any rate already getting the shaft from perfectly legal enterprise.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:09 PM on February 16 [2 favorites]
I'm also in the camp of "if this is even true, I'm not particularly sympathetic." But yeah, there's def little point in scamming poor people, who are at any rate already getting the shaft from perfectly legal enterprise.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:09 PM on February 16 [2 favorites]
Uhm, ok. Good for you. I hope it was cash on completion of work and that you got a receipt because personally I'd feel a little nervous about handing over that much untraceable cash to a contractor who could bail on me, not to mention how stressed out I'd be worrying about the myriad of ways I could get irreparably separated from that cash just carrying it home from the bank.
No receipts! RonButNotStupid, it was a strange and interesting situation, when in Rome etc. The "proper" company building my house wasn't interested in building a driveway, as it was outside their area of expertise being such a small job. The handover date was not fully certain, needing a certification of occupancy, and other final inspections completed. Coordinating a concreter was difficult, with some good ones having a 3-4 month waitlist for jobs. There's also issues around building concrete paths and fences when they are close together: you want to dig and install the fence posts first, then only do the concrete path after (because digging the deep holes for the posts can damage the concrete path). But you don't want to install the full fence yet, because it's possible concrete gets splashed onto the fence while it's being laid. This requires close timing coordination between two different sets of trades, which is more difficult the larger the different companies are because they each work to their own rigid schedules.
Basically, I wanted to live in my house, but it had no driveway, concrete paths or fencing. Vandalism on worksites is rife, as low wage contractors often end up coming back at night to vandalize the site (or getting a "friend" to do it) so the builder has to pay them again to rebuild it. Once the handover date ticks over any damage to the property is my responsibility, so I have an incentive to be actively living in it to deter vandals. As an example, my friend's build nearby was vandalized by people coming in, stopping up the sinks and running the taps full blast, causing water damage from the first floor down to the ground floor. In mine, they took sledgehammers to an entire interior wall section.
I live in an area with mostly Iranian and Syrian refugees, many whom don't speak much English nor are able to get similar employment to what they used to have. The kind of story, like, I was an Engineer / Doctor back in the Middle East, I fled the war and I am a driver / builder now. They tend to do work for each other within the community, mostly on a cash basis, off the books.
I saw one neighbour getting his concrete work finished up and I asked them if they were interested in doing mine. They said, sure we can turn up tomorrow morning 6am... 50% cash upfront when I show up with materials on site, 50% cash at completion. Handshake now. No receipt, nothing, just my word, same as the house they're doing now.
I've also had a complete new bathroom built and another bathroom totally gutted and remodelled by them, as well as a new wooden floor put in. It seriously cost half of what a "proper" company would charge, and the quality and finish was definitely superior to the one a large upmarket builder did for me. Part of this is tax evasion, surely. If I helped my brother out by lending him my truck for a month and he gives me $1000 in cash in return for the inconvenience, is that a taxable transaction? What if it's my neighbour? What about my friend from church? How far does that extend?
Could I have been scammed, yes, course I could, I knew that going in. That's just the nature of things. It underscores how important hyper-local community is because of the transitivity of trust in networks. If I got scammed, people would know and see it. As a migrant myself, I have my own community networks based on ethnicity, nationality or religion, where we use each others small businesses and services.
posted by xdvesper at 3:16 PM on February 16 [8 favorites]
No receipts! RonButNotStupid, it was a strange and interesting situation, when in Rome etc. The "proper" company building my house wasn't interested in building a driveway, as it was outside their area of expertise being such a small job. The handover date was not fully certain, needing a certification of occupancy, and other final inspections completed. Coordinating a concreter was difficult, with some good ones having a 3-4 month waitlist for jobs. There's also issues around building concrete paths and fences when they are close together: you want to dig and install the fence posts first, then only do the concrete path after (because digging the deep holes for the posts can damage the concrete path). But you don't want to install the full fence yet, because it's possible concrete gets splashed onto the fence while it's being laid. This requires close timing coordination between two different sets of trades, which is more difficult the larger the different companies are because they each work to their own rigid schedules.
Basically, I wanted to live in my house, but it had no driveway, concrete paths or fencing. Vandalism on worksites is rife, as low wage contractors often end up coming back at night to vandalize the site (or getting a "friend" to do it) so the builder has to pay them again to rebuild it. Once the handover date ticks over any damage to the property is my responsibility, so I have an incentive to be actively living in it to deter vandals. As an example, my friend's build nearby was vandalized by people coming in, stopping up the sinks and running the taps full blast, causing water damage from the first floor down to the ground floor. In mine, they took sledgehammers to an entire interior wall section.
I live in an area with mostly Iranian and Syrian refugees, many whom don't speak much English nor are able to get similar employment to what they used to have. The kind of story, like, I was an Engineer / Doctor back in the Middle East, I fled the war and I am a driver / builder now. They tend to do work for each other within the community, mostly on a cash basis, off the books.
I saw one neighbour getting his concrete work finished up and I asked them if they were interested in doing mine. They said, sure we can turn up tomorrow morning 6am... 50% cash upfront when I show up with materials on site, 50% cash at completion. Handshake now. No receipt, nothing, just my word, same as the house they're doing now.
I've also had a complete new bathroom built and another bathroom totally gutted and remodelled by them, as well as a new wooden floor put in. It seriously cost half of what a "proper" company would charge, and the quality and finish was definitely superior to the one a large upmarket builder did for me. Part of this is tax evasion, surely. If I helped my brother out by lending him my truck for a month and he gives me $1000 in cash in return for the inconvenience, is that a taxable transaction? What if it's my neighbour? What about my friend from church? How far does that extend?
Could I have been scammed, yes, course I could, I knew that going in. That's just the nature of things. It underscores how important hyper-local community is because of the transitivity of trust in networks. If I got scammed, people would know and see it. As a migrant myself, I have my own community networks based on ethnicity, nationality or religion, where we use each others small businesses and services.
posted by xdvesper at 3:16 PM on February 16 [8 favorites]
There are so many great little quotable lines. Dog my cats!
You’d be amazed how much mileage I get from, “My troika was pursued by wolves.“
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:37 PM on February 16 [3 favorites]
You’d be amazed how much mileage I get from, “My troika was pursued by wolves.“
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:37 PM on February 16 [3 favorites]
This has me feeling sick from the imagined guilt and shame of falling for it, I'm glad the story was written and published -- but I hope she didn't get a book deal for having loads of money to waste and wasting it.
posted by k3ninho at 4:05 PM on February 16 [1 favorite]
posted by k3ninho at 4:05 PM on February 16 [1 favorite]
Jezebel's take on this article. The thing to remember here is that for the scammers, this is their job. If they are any good at all, they have their patter and methods down. Some of the scams start out as clearly looking for soft marks. Some of the things they ask are outlandish or stupid and for that, they are indeed looking for folks who are vulnerable in some way. The longer you stay on the line, the more vulnerable you are. The first problem is answering the phone/answering the text/answering the random message through social media/your dating app/whatever. The longer they have you interacting, the more chances they have to hook you. Once you are overwhelmed or scared or confused, you are just about a goner. And, sorry, but everyone gets overwhelmed, scared, confused sometimes. And they have loads of hooks. The gist of this scam sounds fairly sophisticated and only gets more-so as it goes on. And you might think that by having no money that you are safe. No way. There's so many ways for a scammer to use you. They could go for small rip-offs. Gift cards, small sums of money, "loans" of money, gifts of goods like phones/ipads. They can use your data to set up fake social media profiles/fake dating profiles or use that info to try to scam other people in your social network. My MIL has lost tens of thousands of dollars to scammers and been used as a courier several times. It's a wild world out there. Talk to your people about this, tell people that shame is common feeling but that you will never shame them if they need help.
posted by amanda at 4:13 PM on February 16 [6 favorites]
posted by amanda at 4:13 PM on February 16 [6 favorites]
They could go for small rip-offs. Gift cards, small sums of money, "loans" of money, gifts of goods like phones/ipads.
I'm not sure you understand the scale of "no money" if you're suggesting I could make loans, buy gift cards, never mind buy phones...
posted by Dysk at 4:41 PM on February 16 [2 favorites]
I'm not sure you understand the scale of "no money" if you're suggesting I could make loans, buy gift cards, never mind buy phones...
posted by Dysk at 4:41 PM on February 16 [2 favorites]
The_Vegetables: according to mr_piss - the future is odd
He’s from a prominent family too, the Nantucket Pisses.
posted by dr_dank at 4:58 PM on February 16 [4 favorites]
He’s from a prominent family too, the Nantucket Pisses.
posted by dr_dank at 4:58 PM on February 16 [4 favorites]
What even is the point of us having an FBI if not to solve this problem?
Baby boomers run the US government. They are also the primary targets of these scams. And yet, law enforcement and the FCC seem utterly disengaged with the fact that every single person in the country is targeted by con artists 6-8 time per day. No one in this thread has even raised the possibility that law enforcement might intervene.
posted by eraserbones at 9:04 PM on February 16 [9 favorites]
Baby boomers run the US government. They are also the primary targets of these scams. And yet, law enforcement and the FCC seem utterly disengaged with the fact that every single person in the country is targeted by con artists 6-8 time per day. No one in this thread has even raised the possibility that law enforcement might intervene.
posted by eraserbones at 9:04 PM on February 16 [9 favorites]
easerbones, that's a great question. Are there countries where scams are less of a plague?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:25 AM on February 17
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:25 AM on February 17
I dunno that scams themselves are significantly less of a plague here in the UK, but telephones certainly seem to be more usable than what is described in threads all over mefi. I get 6-8 scam calls a decade, not a day, and that seems to broadly track with what people in my network report.
posted by Dysk at 2:48 AM on February 17 [4 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 2:48 AM on February 17 [4 favorites]
No one in this thread has even raised the possibility that law enforcement might intervene.
I think a lot of us have just come to understand that solving crime isn't really what cops do.
More people are getting away with murder. Unsolved killings reach a record high
I think a lot of us have just come to understand that solving crime isn't really what cops do.
More people are getting away with murder. Unsolved killings reach a record high
While the rate at which murders are solved or "cleared" has been declining for decades, it has now dropped to slightly below 50% in 2020 - a new historic low. And several big cities, including Chicago, have seen the number of murder cases resulting in at least one arrest dip into the low to mid-30% range.posted by hydropsyche at 3:55 AM on February 17 [7 favorites]
No one in this thread has even raised the possibility that law enforcement might intervene.
I am not a lawyer but hoping an actual lawyer might clarify... clearly some fraudulent behavior is criminal, while others are civil in nature.
For example, if I send money to someone on Ebay or Facebook to buy some goods from them, and the goods don't show up at my doorstep, that's a civil matter, pursued and settled through civil courts. The police isn't going to do a SWAT raid on their house with flashbangs in the middle of the night, and for good reason: anyone could accuse me of defrauding them by simply claiming they never received the goods I sent. A lot of low level scams are closer to this type of behavior.
Criminal fraud is typically clear cut when it involves something like hacking or physically stealing your credit card or bank password and using it without your consent, this is where the police and prosecutor clearly get involved.
The type of misdirection and misrepresentation in the article seems to fall in the middle, leaning towards the criminal end of things, but there's not an awful lot for the police to go on. If everyone involved in the scam were simply calling in from overseas, it's not like the US could send officers to execute a physical arrest warrant in Nigeria or Russia.
Rather than police, the US would rather send a drone strike I guess... steal $8 billion of our citizen's money? You can have a Hellfire missile as well =)
posted by xdvesper at 4:52 AM on February 17
I am not a lawyer but hoping an actual lawyer might clarify... clearly some fraudulent behavior is criminal, while others are civil in nature.
For example, if I send money to someone on Ebay or Facebook to buy some goods from them, and the goods don't show up at my doorstep, that's a civil matter, pursued and settled through civil courts. The police isn't going to do a SWAT raid on their house with flashbangs in the middle of the night, and for good reason: anyone could accuse me of defrauding them by simply claiming they never received the goods I sent. A lot of low level scams are closer to this type of behavior.
Criminal fraud is typically clear cut when it involves something like hacking or physically stealing your credit card or bank password and using it without your consent, this is where the police and prosecutor clearly get involved.
The type of misdirection and misrepresentation in the article seems to fall in the middle, leaning towards the criminal end of things, but there's not an awful lot for the police to go on. If everyone involved in the scam were simply calling in from overseas, it's not like the US could send officers to execute a physical arrest warrant in Nigeria or Russia.
Rather than police, the US would rather send a drone strike I guess... steal $8 billion of our citizen's money? You can have a Hellfire missile as well =)
posted by xdvesper at 4:52 AM on February 17
Although I am not a practicing attorney, or a criminal attorney when I was practicing, my understanding about scam enforcement is that jurisdiction is a major stumbling block. At best, the scammer could be anywhere in the US; more often they're overseas. You need resources to deal with that kind of problem -- even to find out where they are. And no, I'm not saying this calls for more police funding; you can imagine where I think that would go. What has to happen first is that the cops have to give a fuck.
... And you might think that by having no money that you are safe. No way. There's so many ways for a scammer to use you.
The less money you have, the more legal it is to gouge and scam you. I'm thinking of rent-to-own, payday loan companies, and the extortionate fees to send anything to or from prisoners.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:04 AM on February 17 [5 favorites]
... And you might think that by having no money that you are safe. No way. There's so many ways for a scammer to use you.
The less money you have, the more legal it is to gouge and scam you. I'm thinking of rent-to-own, payday loan companies, and the extortionate fees to send anything to or from prisoners.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:04 AM on February 17 [5 favorites]
The police isn't going to do a SWAT raid on their house with flashbangs in the middle of the night, and for good reason: anyone could accuse me of defrauding them by simply claiming they never received the goods I sent.
I am not a lawyer, but I do currently handle criminal cases, and I will say that this is a nice idea, but the constraints on the police doing a SWAT raid on a house is more “whatever the police feels like” rather than whether or not the triggering event required actual evidence or a crime that the general public might have thought of as “serious”. This is why SWATTing is a thing, because police can be easily provoked into doing such things on the grounds of a phone call. Also, not speaking of anything from my office, but I’ve heard of other locations where there have absolutely been 3am raids over disputed 30$ credit card charges. It seems to depend on how bored the cops are and how much they want to show off their cool new toys.
posted by corb at 7:05 AM on February 17 [7 favorites]
I am not a lawyer, but I do currently handle criminal cases, and I will say that this is a nice idea, but the constraints on the police doing a SWAT raid on a house is more “whatever the police feels like” rather than whether or not the triggering event required actual evidence or a crime that the general public might have thought of as “serious”. This is why SWATTing is a thing, because police can be easily provoked into doing such things on the grounds of a phone call. Also, not speaking of anything from my office, but I’ve heard of other locations where there have absolutely been 3am raids over disputed 30$ credit card charges. It seems to depend on how bored the cops are and how much they want to show off their cool new toys.
posted by corb at 7:05 AM on February 17 [7 favorites]
There are private people who track down scammers and occasionally find a way to get the police involved, but this isn't the same thing as having a good institutional structure.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:16 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:16 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]
The FCC could eliminate most cases of caller ID spoofing with the stroke of a pen but they simply don't -- instead they have a web page warning me to watch out. https://www.fcc.gov/spoofing
I agree that the police themselves (especially local police) are not going to solve the problem. But to the best of my knowledge we are mostly talking about 'wire fraud' here which is for sure a federal criminal issue.
posted by eraserbones at 7:26 AM on February 17 [6 favorites]
I agree that the police themselves (especially local police) are not going to solve the problem. But to the best of my knowledge we are mostly talking about 'wire fraud' here which is for sure a federal criminal issue.
posted by eraserbones at 7:26 AM on February 17 [6 favorites]
This isn't all by phone. A good bit of it is by email.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:51 AM on February 17 [1 favorite]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:51 AM on February 17 [1 favorite]
Countess Elena: At best, the scammer could be anywhere in the US; more often they're overseas. You need resources to deal with that kind of problem -- even to find out where they are. And no, I'm not saying this calls for more police funding; you can imagine where I think that would go. What has to happen first is that the cops have to give a fuck.
Which you’d think that someone in this family would have some pull with City Hall to get the case some traction. In this instance, there is one element that takes place outside of the phone/email/text world of the scam: the car who picked up the cash. That points to either a knowing accomplice in the US or a rideshare-hired errand to get the box picked up and delivered to another accomplice or unwitting money mule to be scattered and laundered. There’s no way this car wasn’t picked up on the million and one cameras in that part of the city.
posted by dr_dank at 8:59 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]
Which you’d think that someone in this family would have some pull with City Hall to get the case some traction. In this instance, there is one element that takes place outside of the phone/email/text world of the scam: the car who picked up the cash. That points to either a knowing accomplice in the US or a rideshare-hired errand to get the box picked up and delivered to another accomplice or unwitting money mule to be scattered and laundered. There’s no way this car wasn’t picked up on the million and one cameras in that part of the city.
posted by dr_dank at 8:59 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]
This seems like a fraud the FBI or Treasury could investigate, as it involved impersonating multiple federal officers: one of them claimed to work for the FTC, another sent a photoshopped CIA badge, they sent an image of a fake Treasury check.
The more I think about it, the more unusual this scam seems. They hit a victim who was able to get her hands on $50k cash in under 8 hours. The request for cash is odd and really limited their sophisticated scam to a fairly small driving radius, plus putting them at risk.
There are people who deliberately mess with scammers. There are people with direct connections to law enforcement. These are not a huge percentage of the population, but neither is the percentage who can come up with $50k cash in under 6 hours.
I'm still willing to give the victim the benefit of the doubt and take her story at face value, in which case I think either the scammers got very lucky or she was specifically targeted.
posted by justkevin at 9:01 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]
The more I think about it, the more unusual this scam seems. They hit a victim who was able to get her hands on $50k cash in under 8 hours. The request for cash is odd and really limited their sophisticated scam to a fairly small driving radius, plus putting them at risk.
There are people who deliberately mess with scammers. There are people with direct connections to law enforcement. These are not a huge percentage of the population, but neither is the percentage who can come up with $50k cash in under 6 hours.
I'm still willing to give the victim the benefit of the doubt and take her story at face value, in which case I think either the scammers got very lucky or she was specifically targeted.
posted by justkevin at 9:01 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]
This isn't all by phone. A good bit of it is by email.
Wire fraud isn't limited to phone-only. TV and radio were written directly into the statute (despite the lack of wires), and more recently I think it's that "wire" has simply been judicially interpreted to include the internet. (Wire fraud statutes are used to go after crypto scammers, no? And they're not touching phone, TV, or radio.)
posted by nobody at 10:26 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]
Wire fraud isn't limited to phone-only. TV and radio were written directly into the statute (despite the lack of wires), and more recently I think it's that "wire" has simply been judicially interpreted to include the internet. (Wire fraud statutes are used to go after crypto scammers, no? And they're not touching phone, TV, or radio.)
posted by nobody at 10:26 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]
clearly some fraudulent behavior is criminal, while others are civil in nature
State law will vary, but in many states the elements are virtually identical, especially if large sums of money are involved. Most of the civil fraud I've worked on over the years is arguably criminal, too, but established rich people and corporations are involved, so no one even thinks of it--except in comments on newspaper articles reporting settlements that indicate the public is completely oblivious as to who has criminal jurisdiction in their state/within the federal government. In New York, this particular scheme was probably a felony (grand larceny, personation, scheme to defraud). The burden of proof is different, though.
The two major deterrents to criminal investigations in this type of case have been alluded to above: (a) jurisdiction (so much of this activity is effectively being run from corrupt or semi-lawless overseas jurisdictions, making it difficult even to obtain evidence, much less bring cases) and (b) the cops don't much care. These cases require actual hard work to solve.
posted by praemunire at 10:26 AM on February 17 [2 favorites]
State law will vary, but in many states the elements are virtually identical, especially if large sums of money are involved. Most of the civil fraud I've worked on over the years is arguably criminal, too, but established rich people and corporations are involved, so no one even thinks of it--except in comments on newspaper articles reporting settlements that indicate the public is completely oblivious as to who has criminal jurisdiction in their state/within the federal government. In New York, this particular scheme was probably a felony (grand larceny, personation, scheme to defraud). The burden of proof is different, though.
The two major deterrents to criminal investigations in this type of case have been alluded to above: (a) jurisdiction (so much of this activity is effectively being run from corrupt or semi-lawless overseas jurisdictions, making it difficult even to obtain evidence, much less bring cases) and (b) the cops don't much care. These cases require actual hard work to solve.
posted by praemunire at 10:26 AM on February 17 [2 favorites]
I think it's that "wire" has simply been judicially interpreted to include the internet.
Wire fraud includes electronic communications.
posted by praemunire at 10:28 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]
Wire fraud includes electronic communications.
posted by praemunire at 10:28 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]
Scammers pretending to be Duke Energy nearly got me at my new job (at a church), where I was only pretty sure the last bill had been paid. They had hold music, plus answers for everything. They kept me on the phone for 2 hours, during most of which I was pissed at Duke Energy for their ridiculous demands. (E.g. I dont even know if the bank would give me that much cash.) They wanted me to drive to a convenience store in a larger town 15 miles away. It’s when I looked up the sketchy name of that store (not on Duke’s list) and searched for one closer, that I finally became suspicious. During the next long hold I googled the phone number they’d called from & found a script for the exact scam they were running on me. When they got back on the phone I said, “hey, listen to this!”, read it back to them, then cut myself off shouting, “This is a fucking church! You just wasted 2 hours of my time!” They hung up, of course. I’ve gotten similar calls since, to which I respond cheerfully with, “Oh! You’re the scammers!” They also hang up.
posted by anshuman at 3:54 AM on February 18 [8 favorites]
posted by anshuman at 3:54 AM on February 18 [8 favorites]
I googled the phone number they’d called from & found a script for the exact scam they were running on me
If this is true... that's insane that the number (and the scammer) was still in service. It infuriates me that authorities aren't using more modern data-gathering techniques to find and stop scammers. Here's a possibility: when a person receives what they suspect is a scam call, they hang up, pick up and dial *44, and hang up again. This tells an automated system to log the previous call as suspect. With enough of these calls logged, patterns would quickly emerge, nuisance log entries would be filtered out, and scam campaigns would stick out like a sore thumb.
Sadly, better detection won't happen til the phone companies cease making money from scam traffic.
Canada has a fraud reporting centre. The form for reporting a scam call - its worse than an insurance application. We're using 1990s thinking to chase 2020s scammers! Technology makes phone and email scams easy and cheap; we need collection and detection capabilities that are equally efficient.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:39 AM on February 18 [7 favorites]
If this is true... that's insane that the number (and the scammer) was still in service. It infuriates me that authorities aren't using more modern data-gathering techniques to find and stop scammers. Here's a possibility: when a person receives what they suspect is a scam call, they hang up, pick up and dial *44, and hang up again. This tells an automated system to log the previous call as suspect. With enough of these calls logged, patterns would quickly emerge, nuisance log entries would be filtered out, and scam campaigns would stick out like a sore thumb.
Sadly, better detection won't happen til the phone companies cease making money from scam traffic.
Canada has a fraud reporting centre. The form for reporting a scam call - its worse than an insurance application. We're using 1990s thinking to chase 2020s scammers! Technology makes phone and email scams easy and cheap; we need collection and detection capabilities that are equally efficient.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:39 AM on February 18 [7 favorites]
Part of the problem is that for the past several hundred years, banks have been expected to be able to immediately fulfill their depositors' requests. Banks that didn't immediately hand over whatever cash a depositor asked for were presumed to be failing, thus leading to a bank run. The idea that a bank should protect you from yourself is fairly new.I don't really buy this part.
Yes, it's a bad look if a bank refuses to process a check, set up a wire, or print a cashier's check.
But "Come back tomorrow" is exactly what I'd expect my bank to tell me if I tried to withdraw $50,000 in cash (well, actually, I'd expect them to tell me "Sir, you don't have $50,000," but that's a different issue).
I don't think it's remotely unreasonable for the local Chase branch to refuse to fork over a mountain of cash at a moment's notice without a prior arrangement.
There are legitimate logistical issues with handling that much cash, and it says nothing about the financial health of the institution. If anything, you should be relieved that your random suburban bank branch doesn't have millions of dollars sitting around in its vaults! That would be weird, risky, and irresponsible of them!
posted by schmod at 8:14 AM on February 18 [6 favorites]
@Artful codger - of course it’s true. 😊 Iirc the phone number I got the call from was only referenced on the website for some reason, but the poster had gotten the call from a different number. Of course scammers can change numbers (or spoof numbers) any time, so flagging/blocking those numbers may slow down scammers but won’t stop them.
posted by anshuman at 11:50 AM on February 18
posted by anshuman at 11:50 AM on February 18
... our banking relationships are not private. None of us should assume that, if someone calls us with information that we might consider personal, that the caller is the sole holder of that information. Those who claim to know something personal about us, those things were stolen, or possibly gathered, or they were obtained years in advance of that moment ...
Not just banking relationships. I no longer assume that any piece of information about my life is private. Want to convince me you're not a scammer? You'll have to do better than just tell me something that's been leaked to hackers seven times already.
posted by dg at 3:38 PM on February 18 [2 favorites]
Not just banking relationships. I no longer assume that any piece of information about my life is private. Want to convince me you're not a scammer? You'll have to do better than just tell me something that's been leaked to hackers seven times already.
posted by dg at 3:38 PM on February 18 [2 favorites]
Of course scammers can change numbers (or spoof numbers) any time, so flagging/blocking those numbers may slow down scammers but won’t stop them.
Scammers can spoof the numbers that recipients see via call display, but do you really believe that the telcos themselves don't actually know the real originating locations and numbers of every call?
It's not a matter of blocking numbers, it's getting enough call data to spot these campaigns, where they come out of, and any other common features, and acting on that information.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:59 AM on February 19 [1 favorite]
Scammers can spoof the numbers that recipients see via call display, but do you really believe that the telcos themselves don't actually know the real originating locations and numbers of every call?
It's not a matter of blocking numbers, it's getting enough call data to spot these campaigns, where they come out of, and any other common features, and acting on that information.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:59 AM on February 19 [1 favorite]
but do you really believe that the telcos themselves don't actually know the real originating locations and numbers of every call?
As far as I can tell, there's no technical need for telcos to have accurate knowledge of an outside call's origination point in order to connect the call.
I thought I'd be able to find an explainer on what exactly the telco sees when it gets a request/handoff from outside its own network, but instead the best evidence I've found is that a whole protocol (called "STIR/SHAKEN") had to be invented and implemented in just the last few years in an attempt to allow for verification of calls' origin points.
I haven't dug into it very far, but it seems to be a certificate-based scheme, where telcos include in the metadata for each call (specifically in the "Session Initiation Protocol," or "SIP," and I haven't been able to tell for sure whether whoever named "STIR/SHAKEN" was punning on the SIP thing or not), a cryptographically signed attestation of the call's true origin point. So the whole thing relies on bad-acting/lax telcos getting their certificates revoked and the FCC (eventually?) mandating that calls can't be accepted from telcos with revoked or missing certificates.
(Here's the FCC page on STIR/SHAKEN, in case anyone is interested in digging further. The most recent update was from about a year ago, and it looks like they were still closing up loopholes/exceptions to the mandates at that point.)
posted by nobody at 7:55 PM on February 19 [2 favorites]
As far as I can tell, there's no technical need for telcos to have accurate knowledge of an outside call's origination point in order to connect the call.
I thought I'd be able to find an explainer on what exactly the telco sees when it gets a request/handoff from outside its own network, but instead the best evidence I've found is that a whole protocol (called "STIR/SHAKEN") had to be invented and implemented in just the last few years in an attempt to allow for verification of calls' origin points.
I haven't dug into it very far, but it seems to be a certificate-based scheme, where telcos include in the metadata for each call (specifically in the "Session Initiation Protocol," or "SIP," and I haven't been able to tell for sure whether whoever named "STIR/SHAKEN" was punning on the SIP thing or not), a cryptographically signed attestation of the call's true origin point. So the whole thing relies on bad-acting/lax telcos getting their certificates revoked and the FCC (eventually?) mandating that calls can't be accepted from telcos with revoked or missing certificates.
(Here's the FCC page on STIR/SHAKEN, in case anyone is interested in digging further. The most recent update was from about a year ago, and it looks like they were still closing up loopholes/exceptions to the mandates at that point.)
posted by nobody at 7:55 PM on February 19 [2 favorites]
As far as I can tell, there's no technical need for telcos to have accurate knowledge of an outside call's origination point in order to connect the call.
Billing? Telcos still make some money from long-distance calls, though most people have plans. Traffic prediction and planning? And all calls have to be routed, so that's recordable information.
I haven't dug into the specifics, but intuition plus network, data and software experience suggest to me that it must be so, or very possible. You don't have to be paranoid to believe that the world's intelligence agencies all have arrangements with their national telcos to get such information and more, when required.
STIR/SHAKEN looks like a protocol for sharing and using a subset of that data, which of course also supports the idea that the data are available.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:11 AM on February 20
Billing? Telcos still make some money from long-distance calls, though most people have plans. Traffic prediction and planning? And all calls have to be routed, so that's recordable information.
I haven't dug into the specifics, but intuition plus network, data and software experience suggest to me that it must be so, or very possible. You don't have to be paranoid to believe that the world's intelligence agencies all have arrangements with their national telcos to get such information and more, when required.
STIR/SHAKEN looks like a protocol for sharing and using a subset of that data, which of course also supports the idea that the data are available.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:11 AM on February 20
If you end up digging up more, do report back, but my read was that STIR/SHAKEN is a protocol specifically for authenticating the trust-level of that data, which implies that in its absence, that data had been falsifiable without breaking whatever the call networking requires. (I assume you're right that in normal circumstances without bad actors involved, the telcos know the precise origin point of every incoming call. But STIR/SHAKEN seems to ultimately be about ostracizing any telco unwilling to truthfully communicate the origin point for calls originating in its network or passing through its network, no?)
posted by nobody at 7:41 AM on February 20
posted by nobody at 7:41 AM on February 20
A protocol that's not trustworthy is useless, so I'm sure that that's part of it. But we seem to agree that the data are available to be collected, and the remaining part is the willingness to collect, share and use it.
If I dig in further, I'll post what I find.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:00 AM on February 20
If I dig in further, I'll post what I find.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:00 AM on February 20
Last April, the FCC threatened to fine providers who route unauthenticated calls on a per-call basis. In November, the FCC sent letters to a number of "gateway providers" (companies that allow outside calls into the US network) reminding them of their obligations, which may have come as a response to a senate hearing on the subject in October. The enforcement actions the FCC has taken have really long timelines and often have little effect on companies that simply dissolve and reform under new names and claimed ownership.
posted by fedward at 10:08 AM on February 20 [2 favorites]
posted by fedward at 10:08 AM on February 20 [2 favorites]
Oh, I forgot one more link about a couple guys who already had lifetime bans from robocall operations (along with millions in unpaid fines) who just kept creating new companies so they could keep at it.
posted by fedward at 10:14 AM on February 20 [2 favorites]
posted by fedward at 10:14 AM on February 20 [2 favorites]
The enforcement actions the FCC has taken have really long timelines and often have little effect on companies that simply dissolve and reform under new names and claimed ownership.
If your tools are dull, you sharpen them; if they're inadequate or inefficient, you get better ones. Of course the telcos and the robocalling companies are pushing back - successfully, it seems.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:30 AM on February 20
If your tools are dull, you sharpen them; if they're inadequate or inefficient, you get better ones. Of course the telcos and the robocalling companies are pushing back - successfully, it seems.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:30 AM on February 20
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It took me several tries, a couple of years ago, to convince my elderly Mom that no, her grandson was not under arrest for hitting a pregnant woman, and needed $9k in cash right away for bail.
Never trust a cold call. The "don't tell anyone" is probably the best initial cue that it's a scam.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:36 AM on February 15 [27 favorites]