Senior Citizens: The Tenfold Target

In my previous post I discussed the Five Cornerstones underlying the tactics used by Jamaican con artists to perpetrate sweepstakes scams. In this post I will discuss ten characteristics older Americans may posses, that make them prime targets for these scams.

1. Wealth. Senior citizens have had four, five, or perhaps even six decades to accumulate financial assets. As Willie Sutton famously said, he robbed banks because that's where the money is, and scammers defraud seniors for the very same reason.
2. Financial insecurity. Conversely, not all older Americans are well off, or as well off as they would like to be. Case in point: My father, who was afraid of outliving his money in part because his retirement fund went bankrupt.
3. Loss of mental acuity. As we age our thinking tends not to be as sharp as it once was, and it has recently been theorized that changes in the aging brain - specifically changes in the medial temporal lobe and ventromedial prefrontal cortex - may make elderly people particularly susceptible to scams and other financial swindles.
4. Innocence. Over the course of their lifetimes most elders have seen everything under the sun. Many, however, have not seen everything 'in the dark' and come from a more innocent time and place.
5. Ignorance. Given their innocence, many seniors are consequently unaware of the games fraudsters play and how they play them.
6. Optimism.  It is generally accepted that optimists like my dad tend to live longer than pessimists. The downside is that under the right circumstances their optimism can cause them to deny that they have been scammed, and see the glass half full when in fact it is empty.
7. Respect for authority figures. Unlike the Baby Boomers, my father's generation was brought up to not to question authority or those who claim to possess it.
8. Isolation. Most senior citizens want to continue living in their homes as long as they can, and  we want them to as long as it does not pose a danger to their health or safety. Independence can devolve into isolation, however, following the death of a spouse, a loss in mobility, or some other event that reduces their contact with family members and friends.   
9. Lack of stimulation. Removed from others and the outside world, some isolated elders live in emotional deserts devoid of anticipation or excitement.
10. Benevolence. Regardless of their financial situation, most seniors want to help their loved ones and leave a legacy. My dad was no exception, as on more than one occasion he declared his intention to share his winnings with his family and church.

If it isn't clear already, I hope this list will at least give you a sense of how neatly these vulnerabilities dovetail with the Five Cornerstones, particularly the cornerstones of confidence, greed, and secrecy, which I will discuss in more detail later on.

The Five Cornerstones of Jamaican Lottery Scams

The key to understanding the tactics of Jamaican lottery scammers and the behavior of victims, is understanding the five fundamentals upon which these crimes are based. I call these fundamentals The Five Cornerstones, and they they are confidence, greed, speed, anonymity and secrecy.

Confidence
My first impulse was to call this cornerstone trust, but I chose confidence instead, because to gain a mark's trust the crooks must project confidence to get it in return. Hence the terms confidence game and con artist. What is more, once trust is established victims often share confidences - personal information they would not otherwise disclose - that the criminals can use to their advantage. This was certainly true in my father's case, as his Svengali knew all about the conservatorship and the safeguards I had put in place to protect my parents' remaining assets.

Greed
The fraudsters are out to get as much as they can, and if given the chance will exhaust every possible source of value they can extract from victims including their identities. I use the word value because while they mainly want cash, the scammers will sometimes ask victims to buy and ship them cell phones, tablets, or laptops for them to sell on the black market or use to perpetrate more crimes. My dad sent all of these things to the crooks, and even allowed them to go online and purchase over $1000 worth of warm weather gear from American Eagle Outfitters using the debit card to which his Social Security payments were being diverted (see this post for details).

Speed
Like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the criminals want what they want and they want it NOW. Unlike the spoiled little girl, their impatience is calculated because they know that unless they can instill a sense of urgency in their targets, the less likely those targets are to pay the their bogus fees. The scammers are also in a hurry because they don't want to give targets who comply time to change their mind. And if by chance they change their mind after sending a payment, it will likely be in vain because thanks to the money transfer services (and increasingly pre-loaded debit cards) the funds travel at internet speed and directly into the gangsters' grubby hands. 

Anonymity
Besides speed, the money transfer services and prepaid debit cards make (or at least used to make) it ridiculously easy for money to change hands anonymously, as long as the sum is below a certain amount. At the peak of my father's involvement it was not only possible for the crooks to receive funds without showing ID, but possible for victims to send money without ID. As a result my dad was able to evade blocks on his money transfers by using  fake names and addresses, including the name and address of a deceased friend, a fellow Navy veteran who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Secrecy
In addition to all of the above, the scammers want to operate freely, without interference from concerned family members or friends. They thus try to keep victims quiet, and to accomplish this they often pose as authority figures (sweepstakes officials or law enforcement agents) and order victims not to tell anybody about their payments or winnings.

For those wondering why fear is not one of the cornerstones: While it is true that the fraudsters sometimes threaten people who refuse to pay or stop paying, fear does not qualify as a cornerstone, for two reasons.

The first reason is that threats are a tactic of last resort because they violate the the first cornerstone, confidence. After all: Who trusts someone who threatens them? Sadly and ironically, some victims capitulate because they are confident the crooks will make good on their hollow threats.

The other reason fear is not a cornerstone, is that once a threat is made, the crime is no longer a scam: It is extortion.

Now that you have been introduced to the Five Cornerstones, in my next post I will cover ten characteristics senior citizens may possess, that make them prime targets for crimes based on them. To those of you still struggling to protect a loved one from one of these scams, my heart goes out to you and by way of this blog, my thoughts. Keep fighting, and I will do my best to do likewise even though my father is no longer with us.

SOS

Good To His Word

To this day, testifying against my father at his conservatorship hearing is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I was not the only person who testified, however, because a local police officer offered to testify on our family's behalf, and naturally we accepted.

Ironically, our best witness turned out to be my dad. When asked by the judge if he was going to stop sending money to the scammers, he said could not promise to refrain from doing so because he still believed he would eventually receive a large cash prize. His blatantly honest answer sealed his fate, and reinforced my conviction that without legal protection the only things that would stop him would be bankruptcy or death.

As for my dad not stopping, time eventually proved us both right as he continued to do the crooks' bidding until he died in May of this year. Sadly, the scam was his raison d'etre - primary reason for living - after my mother passed away in 2012. It gave him cause to get out not just of bed, but out of the house, and until he was sidelined by congestive heart failure he would sometimes disappear for hours to launder money through bank accounts opened on the orders of his Jamaican master, "Frank."

While there is no moral to my father's story, there are lessons learned and one of them is this: Some victims of advance fee scams aren't just taken in, their lives are taken over just as my dad's was, the last decade of his life.

One of the biggest ironies in my father's saga - and there are many - is that I probably owe a debt of gratitude to the scammers for giving my dad a reason to live after my mom died. I cannot bring myself to say thank you, however, because I feel an irrepressible urge to say something else ending in you that for the sake of decorum, I will not.