Sunday, February 12, 2012

The Other Shoe Drops

Before I begin, my apologies for the long absence, particularly to readers grappling with the crime this blog is dedicated to fighting. I hope my previous posts have been helpful in the meantime.

Since I was appointed conservator, our family has been mostly successful protecting my father against further harm by the Jamaican con men. The reason I say "mostly successful" is that while it has been three years since I assumed control of my father's finances, our victory is not complete.

First, my dad continues to serve as a Money Mule for the crooks, receiving funds from other victims and forwarding all or part of the proceeds to the Caribbean using aliases.

The second reason total victory is not yet ours, is that the inevitable finally happened: The scammers stole my father's identity, and have been wreaking havoc with it ever since.

Initially, the fraudsters opened a cell phone account with five mobile numbers in my dad's name, and ran up a big balance for which AT&T now holds my father responsible.

Most recently they went online and made changes to my dad's Social Security account, and diverted his monthly payment to a prepaid cash card, which cannot be traced. When I asked the Social Security Administration how this was possible, they stated that some recipients prefer transfers to bank cards to checks and direct deposit, and added that when the SSA sees an account number, they have no way of telling if it is a standard bank account or a prepaid cash card. So they allow it.

The good news is that we got my father's money back (from the government at least), and now that they are aware of the theft, Social Security is monitoring my dad's account for signs of foul play. The bad news is that the agency refuses to appoint a Representative Payee for my father, on the grounds that he is "high functioning" (translation: otherwise able to take care of himself) and thus capable of exercising sound judgment with respect to his payments, an absurd notion given the mound of evidence to the contrary. Apparently it never occurred to them that my father may have surrendered his personal information on purpose, in the hope of finally receiving the multimillion dollar prize promised by the criminals.

The battles continue . . .