Thursday, April 30, 2009

White Knight, Black Heart

Perpetrators of Advance Fee fraud are so contemptuous of victims that they will rip them off coming and going.

By "coming and going" I mean that, after swindling them, the crooks try to extract even more cash from their quarry by riding to their rescue. Which is to say: Jamaican scammers try to get even more money from victims, by pretending to help them recover the money they stole.

All for a fee, of course, payable in advance, in cash.

This con - commonly known as a Recovery scam or "reloading" - was run repeatedly on my father. Though the approach was basically the same each time, my dad's would-be rescuers varied, and included fictitious characters such as
  • Internal investigators from Publisher's Clearing House, and Wachovia Bank
  • FBI and IRS agents
  • Officials from the FTC
  • Representatives of bogus watchdog and anti-fraud organizations
  • Goodhearted colleagues of "the bad guys"
With heroes like this, who needs villains?

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