The Year Of The Donkey

Just when you think scam victims can't get any lower, you find they've sunken so far that they have to reach up to touch bottom. Such is case with my father, who is now laundering money for the scum who cleaned him out. It's official: My dad is a Money Mule.

Can I get a hee-haw?

His new role was exposed recently when I visited my mother on a rare day off. As luck would have it, I was present to sign for a suspicious Express Mail envelope addressed to my dad, who was gone at the time. I immediately excused myself and took the parcel straight to the nearest postal inspector.

My suspicions were confirmed when the agent opened the envelope and found cash, which to no one's surprise came from another scam victim.

Outraged by my interference, my father insisted that I give the money back on the grounds that it was rightfully his. Why? Because the crooks promised him that if he did them this one last favor (receive funds from other dupes and wire them to Jamaica), they would deliver the package containing his winnings. Never mind that similar commitments were made and always broken. Never mind that the dough wasn't his, that its rightful owner was a single mother running a day care center out of her home.

By my math that makes over 130 "last favors" my dad has done for the fraudsters, and one would think such generosity would have been reciprocated by now. It hasn't, of course, because altruism is one of many weaknesses exploited by the vermin running this game.

As for the cash: The USPS returned it to its rightful owner and put my father on a Mail Watch. Word has it that other envelopes were intercepted, and their contents returned to the sender.

Score one for the cat, who awaits the mouse's next move.

Would You Give This Man A Credit Card?

I submit the following case for your consideration.

If you worked for a major bank, would you issue a credit card to an applicant if:

• The person applying had been declared an Adult With An Impairment in a court of law, and the three major credit bureaus had been advised of this fact?
  
• As an impaired adult, the prospective cardholder lacked the legal capacity to enter into financial agreements, and have financial agreements enforced against them?
  
• Another institution had to write off as uncollectable over $25,000 because they kept advancing cash to the applicant after learning he was not only impaired, but the victim of an ongoing scam?

If you cared about your job and had a lick of common sense, it would be idiotic with a capital "I" to issue a credit card to such an individual.

Yet that's precisely what Capital One, did.

By their actions, I can only conclude that Capital One (who I have thus dubbed "Crapital One") are incompetent, greedy, or desperate. Or all of the above.

Did these people learn nothing from the recent financial meltdown?

If they learned anything, it was the wrong lesson: Namely, that if you're too big to fail, you can be as reckless and disdainful of cardholders as you please, because the taxpayers will bail you out.

As the taxpayer in charge of my father's finances, I, for one, do not intend to bail out Capital One and repay the money they carelessly loaned my dad.

Postscript: Capital One eventually canceled my father's credit card. Not because I ordered them to, but because of suspected fraudulent activity, such as failed attempts by others to obtain his account number, and/or make unauthorized transactions.

To quote Gomer Pyle USMC: "Sur-prise, sur-prise, sur-prise . . ."