View from the cop: Crime & punishment
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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2006 > June > 02
Friday, June 2, 2006
Scam artists count on you to trust and obey
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Why is it that when we see crimes of identity theft, especially in the form of a scam, we find it hard to understand why someone fell for a con so obvious?
Some ID theft victims couldn’t do a thing to prevent it. Someone picking your Social Security number out of a pile of thousands is best written off as bad luck.
Losing your credit card at the bar after a hard night’s drinking is unfortunate, but hardly written up as bad luck. As a matter of fact, there are very few cases of drunks losing a credit card that ended up being used by another person. My theory is that at the time of the lost card, everyone else was drunk, too. They were too busy throwing up in the bathroom or parking lot to notice.
The saying that “God looks after drunks and small children” is somewhat true given that most small children haven’t yet established credit.
A recent article in the paper reported that almost 3 million victims had been duped by an international group of scam artists working in several countries.
They ripped off many Spanish-speaking U.S. residents hoping to establish credit in exchange for a couple of hundred dollars. In other scams, phony lucrative investments reeled in thousands of folks hoping to make quick money. One investment promised a “legal” way to avoid paying taxes. Other scams involved lottery winnings, (I’ve won the Spanish Lotto twice) and various investment schemes.
It seems so ridiculous that anyone would fall for such a scam. The reason we see it so clearly, after the fact of course, is that we have no emotional need for whatever reward the crooks were offering.
If we have credit, we don’t understand why someone would pay $200 bucks to some fly-by-night guy offering to magically establish credit. If we have no credit, and are at a great disadvantage because of it, we might listen to his pitch. There’s a good chance we’d convince ourselves it was a good idea.
At some point, almost everyone falls for quick-money scams or, if not scams, easy-money ads. Most of us can chalk this up to inexperience and the need for money, mostly when we’re younger and not inclined to think things through.
Some scams are very efficient because they don’t have any emotion attached. The more profitable ones involve senior citizen victims. Seniors are of a more trusting generation and they tend to give more time to phony sales pitches. If you give a scam-artist enough time, he or she will be able to make some personal connection. It’s what they do best. Find some emotional button to push.
In the case of seniors, sometimes they enjoy the conversation and the fact that someone calls and spends time talking to them.
Years ago, one of my flim-flam victims said she had the feeling she was being duped but she was lonely and enjoyed the conversations she had with the woman who was working on taking $50,000 dollars from the victim’s savings. She had no immediate family and her loneliness drove her to rationalize risking thousands for the time she spent in conversation with what she later described as a “daughter-figure.”
As sad as that is, it happens at so many different levels. Kids, the older ones, rip off aging parents and locals rip off seniors through nickel-and-dime scams ranging from overcharging them for groceries or phony driveway repair, roof repair, or parking lot car-repair scams.
Even after I became a police officer, I fell for a good pitch on a product that I was tailor-made to sell. I was contacted by a businessman who had connected to a company that made burglar and medical-emergency alarms. The system was monitored somewhere in Siberia and it was a sure thing, according to him.
The fact that I was a police officer meant that I would have instant credibility. I didn’t stop to think that it was most and foremost, a conflict of interest. (I was a rookie and still thought it cool to wear shoulder holsters.) I paid him a thousand bucks and took this suitcase-looking thing and headed out to fat city.
Fortunately for me, I tried a sale on a man who shot so many holes in my product that I ended up confessing that I didn’t have a clue how to sell this thing and so I asked him for advice. His advice was to dump it.
The next day I called the slick business guy and told him that I was returning the whole thing and for the sake of both of us, I wanted my money back and he and I would go off in different directions. He didn’t like the idea, but I told him I was friends with the cable guy and could arrange for him to have non-stop Oprah, 24 hours a day, forever.
He caved.
The point of this is that good principles are based on good fundamentals. As simple as it sounds, there are two old sayings that will keep most of you out of trouble:
— If it seems too good to be true, it usually is.
— You never get something for nothing.
Remember:
— Ask questions
— Be skeptical
— First instincts are usually right
— Abolish the designated hitting rule
— Don’t respond to bulk e-mail offering things that just don’t seem easy to achieve or anything else for that matter.
Use the Georgia “No Call” list, tell solicitors, up front, you aren’t interested, and hang up. If you have any reservations about something, even though you may have made some level of commitment and just don’t feel right about it, don’t let your pride get you into trouble. Ask for help.
