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.

Social Insecurity

When I was appointed Conservator, my father's Social Security distributions were being deposited in an account under my protection. For years the funds flowed without incident, until one day a check bounced. Puzzled, I contacted the bank and found it came back because my dad's last monthly payment had not been received.

I saw this as the handiwork of the scammers, and for good reason. A couple of years earlier they had gone online and diverted a couple of my parents' Social Security payments to debit cards and cashed them out. Thankfully, the SSA reimbursed my folks despite not getting the money back themselves.

This time I was wrong. I discovered that the SSA had sent the funds elsewhere at the direction of my father, who found out somehow that he could order them to do it. I was flabbergasted and wondered how this could be, particularly since the agency knew he had been legally declared An Adult With An Impairment. Surely it was a mistake.

Well, it wasn't, and the case worker told me they could not disclose the details of my dad's payments without him being present, which wasn't going to happen. They said I was however welcome to apply to be his Representative Payee, and if appointed they could tell me where the money was going and would send it where I wanted.

I had applied once before, after my folks' payments had been tampered with. With Letters of Conservatorship and mounds of evidence in hand I was confident of success, and to my dismay the application was declined. Perhaps the SSA regarded the diversions as an isolated incident, or maybe my father - a retired salesman - simply talked them out of it. Whatever the reason I was turned down, and though I disagreed with the decision I reckoned there was no harm as long as my dad's payments were still protected.

Since that was no longer true I applied again and was turned down again. So I filed an appeal (called a Request for Reconsideration) and that was declined also. The agency would not explain the repeated denials, other than to say that it was still in my father's best interest to continue receiving his monthly payments.

Not knowing where else to turn I contacted the office of my local congressman, and for the next 18 months they tried to help me overturn SSA's ruling. Though unsuccessful, thanks to an assist from a Special Agent from the Inspector General's office we discovered that my applications were being denied in part because I had not provided any recent evidence that my dad was unable to handle his monthly payments, a virtual impossibility because I had been handling them since being appointed conservator six years earlier. Plus, what the agency really wanted was a letter from his doctor stating that he was incompetent. I approached my father's physician and he declined because he didn't want to be involved.

Disappointed but undeterred, I set about trying to get the recent proof the SSA demanded. I kept digging, and after several failed attempts got a break that enabled me to obtain a court order granting access to the call history for the cell phone my father uses for scam-related communications. With it I was able to determine where my dad's payments were going, and a subsequent court order secured financial records showing how they were being spent.

 As expected the deposits were being routed to a debit card and the proceeds were mostly being withdrawn for cash, often the same day as the funds hit the account. What didn't go to cash went to purchases for the scammers, including laptops, tablets and high-end smart phones without call plans. Plus over $1000 worth of shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops from a retailer who confirmed that the gear had been ordered online from a Jamaican IP address.

Armed with fresh evidence that my father was still in constant contact with the crooks and squandering his monthly payments, I applied a third time to be appointed Representative Payee. Surely they can't turn me down this time, I thought. 

Wrong again.

Incredibly, the SSA claimed my dad still showed a capability to manage his monthly payments, an absurdity in light of the facts past and present. Ridiculous or not that was their position, so it was back to the drawing board. Should I file a lawsuit? Or petition the court for guardianship, which if granted would force the agency to comply with my orders?

Ultimately I decided against both. First, lawyers would be required, and having been down that road before we lacked the resources travel it again. Second, had we the means, a positive outcome was not guaranteed because my father was still able to make sound judgements about his housing, health care and other non-money issues, key considerations in guardianship cases. Besides: Legal action should not have been necessary because the agency now had overwhelming proof that appointing a Representative Payee was justified.

Which left only one option: Taking my case to the media. Thankfully they agreed to help, and when they got involved the SSA quickly reversed their decision, prompting me to wonder what finally tipped the scales in my favor. Was it the negative publicity, or extra political pressure brought to bear by members of Congressional committees with oversight of the agency who were now aware of my struggle? Or some combination of the two? Ultimately it didn't make any difference because all that mattered was the result.

In fairness to the Social Security Administration, everyone I dealt with was courteous and sympathetic. While appreciated I didn't need their courtesy and sympathy: What I needed was for them to do the right thing, and I am sorry that such lengths were necessary to get them to do it. Had they been more diligent and put greater stock in my dad's actions than his words, they would have arrived the correct decision much sooner. Ironically they did not because like my father they were being scammed, by him. 

Looking back, applying to become Representative Payee should have been if not my first act as conservator, one of the first. Regrettably, at the time I did not know what a Representative Payee was and had not been advised to become one.

All of which leads to the moral of this true story: If you have Power of Attorney or are the conservator for a scam victim, don't make the same mistake I did and apply to the SSA immediately.

 

 

Still Here, Still Fighting

As we begin the new year I would like to report that my father is no longer involved with the scammers. Unfortunately I can't do that, because he is still a money mule for the Jamaicans.

While I have long suspected he was still laundering money for the crooks, those suspicions were confirmed only recently when I volunteered to gas up his car and found two opened Express Mail envelopes peeking out from beneath one of the floor mats. Both were empty and from strangers on opposite sides of the country, and instead of confronting my father - which is pointless - I simply copied the information from the labels, put the envelopes back under the mat and reported the matter to law enforcement authorities where the senders reside.

Because those authorities were not obligated to share the outcome, I don't know if my actions made any difference. I do know, however, that they made a difference to me, for by taking action I am making good on my promise to keep battling the bastards as long as my dad remains in their thrall.

Happy New Year - and to those of you engaged in similar battles, a toast:  Here's to making life more difficult for Caribbean con men in 2016.

Cheers,

SOS  

The Victim Isn't The Only Victim

Since I started this blog I have referred to my father as the victim of a Jamaican lottery scam. While correct, this description is inadequate because my dad is in fact the primary victim of a crime with many casualties. Consider the other parties adversely affected by the scam:

• My late mother. As with most marriages of their generation, there was no "his" and "her" money. It was all theirs and thus my dad's losses were my mom's as well. And I am sad to report that while she was in the early stages of the dementia that eventually took her life, my father - in a desperate act antithetical to his character - took advantage of her impairment and talked her into withdrawing cash from a joint bank account after he had been denied access, thoroughly convinced that all would be forgiven when he received his big prize.
• My siblings. Because they also oppose the scam, like me they are now regarded as adversaries by my father.
• Me. While I do not think of myself as a victim, like my siblings I will never have the same relationship with my dad that I did before. And though I don't see my father as a burden, I have been saddled with the administrative burden associated with being his conservator.
  
• Potential beneficiaries. I cringe whenever I calculate the opportunity cost of my parents' losses. For instance, the funds could have put two grandchildren through college or helped other family members in times of need. Or been used to improve their aging home. Or donated to organizations dear to them. Instead, my dad's benevolence (intent to share his winnings, which he often mentioned) was exploited by a ring of conniving Caribbean scumbags.
  
• Friends. The circle of financial losers extends beyond our family. My father borrowed money from several acquaintances and collectively owes them thousands of dollars that will never be paid back.
• Creditors. Because most of my parents' liquid assets were lost in the scam, my dad is cash-poor and subsequently unable to pay off his credit cards, let alone make the minimum monthly installments. All have now been sent out for collection and some lenders have written off his outstanding balance as a bad debt.
  
• Other senior citizens. As I noted earlier, my father has served as a money mule for the crooks, receiving payments from other victims and wiring the proceeds overseas. And on one occasion, as another "favor" to his island masters he willingly participated in a scheme to con a retiree in Texas.

So as you see, this post is not an exercise in semantics. It is unassailable proof that when it comes to Jamaican lottery scams, the victim is not the only victim.

A Lost Episode Found

So much has happened - and continues to happen - since my father first became involved in a Jamaican lottery scam, that it is difficult to remember everything that has occurred. Which isn't all bad, because most of these memories are painful and thus worth forgetting.

While revisiting some old posts, I came across a reply that triggered a flashback. Namely, a reply posted by DIDS on October 7, 2010 to Birth of A Blog: My Dad's Story. In her reply DIDS recounted how, after severing the lines of communication between her mother and the scammers, the crooks contacted the police department under an assumed name and requested a "well check" on her mom. Local officials complied despite the fact that the call came from area code 876 (Jamaica), which should have prompted suspicion.

As I now recall the same thing happened to me in the spring of 2013 when my father was hospitalized for minor surgery. The procedure was done on an outpatient basis, but complications made it necessary for him be held over for two nights for observation.

The day my father was discharged, a police officer knocked on my door. He said he had received a call from a relative concerned about my father's well-being who had been trying to contact my dad for several days with no response. I told the officer that my father was being scammed, that the caller was not kin and certainly no friend. The policeman said he suspected as much, but was required to investigate as a precaution.

In truth my father had not been out of touch with the criminals for several days, and their claim that he had, was a bold-faced lie.

Or was it?

The reason I ask is that when one is used to calling or being called several times a day, every day, days can seem like weeks to scammers and their victims, in the twisted world of Scam Land.

The Five Things Scammers Want

If you are trying to protect a loved one snared in a Jamaican Lottery scam, it is good to know exactly what the crooks want, because it is the key to their tactics and provides insight into the behavior of serial victims like my father.

Yes, the bad guys want money, but there is more to it than that. They want to look legitimate, and once victims start paying, they want:

                                  As much money as they can get, as fast as they can get it, 
                                            without getting caught, and no interference.

To Look Legitimate
Scam perpetrators use a variety of  means to make themselves look legitimate, and the first is to claim that the victim has won big in a real, or real-sounding enterprise such as Publisher's Clearing House, or the fictitious Gold Rush sweepstakes.

To lend credence to their spurious claims, the scammers often employ one or more fakes to bamboozle prospects. For example:

• Fake letters
• Fake prize checks or copies of fake prize checks, bearing the victim’s name
• Fake phone numbers, a practice known as “spoofing”
• Domestic call-forwarding services that transfer calls to Jamaica without the victim’s knowledge 
• Fake bank deposits, in phony accounts or the victim’s account
  

As Much Money As They Can Get

When it comes to picking victims' pockets, the con artists know just where to look and they will try to get their grubby hands on everything they can. Here is a list of funds that scammers try to tap:

• Bank Accounts (checking, savings, Certificates of Deposit)
• Investments (stocks, bonds, annuities, 401k plans, IRAs, mutual funds)
•  Loans
• Collateralized (home equity, auto, life insurance policies, etc.)
• Personal loans from friends and relatives
• Cash advances on the victim's credit card account
• Cash advances on credit card accounts opened with the victim's stolen identity
• Social Security and pension payments
• Inheritances and Trust funds
• Death benefits from insurance policies
• Items of value that can be sold for cash or used to perpetrate more crimes, such as:
• Jewelry, antiques, etc.
• Personal electronics purchased by the victim for shipment to the scammers and their associates, such as smart phones without call plans, iPads and laptop computers

As Fast As They Can Get It

The criminals want victims' money as soon as possible, and the sooner the better. Thus they always try to create a sense of urgency when prodding marks to send them cash. They use a host of ploys to accomplish this, such as pretending to be held up at Customs at the local airport, or telling targets that they are on their way to deliver their prize winnings in person.

Besides closing the deal, such tactics are designed to give the victim as little time as possible to change their mind about paying the thieves' bogus fees. So, too, is the flim-flammers' demand that dupes send money by the fastest means possible, whether it be wire transfer or overnight mail by the Postal Service, Federal Express or UPS.

Without Getting Caught

Cash is king in Scam Land, and for good reason: Unlike other forms of payment it cannot be cancelled, and leaves no electronic or paper trail back to the to swindlers.

Unfortunately for scam victims and their advocates, it is incredibly easy to send and receive cash anonymously, anywhere. Hence the bandits' insistence that pigeons transmit funds by MoneyGram and Western Union, or utilize prepaid debit cards from the likes of  GreenDot.

To further cover their tracks, the crooks occasionally use "money mules" - some of them past victims who keep part of the proceeds - to receive and relay funds.

With No Interference

Once the stream of money starts the crooks don't want interlopers interrupting its flow, particularly family members and conduits like the wire transfer services. As one of those interlopers, I have found that the crooks use two methods - sometimes in conjunction - to discourage meddling: Secrecy and false identifies. 

Secrecy

• Victims are instructed not to tell anyone about the sweepstakes and their dealings with the con men. To ensure compliance, the person giving the instructions sometimes poses as an FBI agent or other authority figure.
• Business with the criminals is typically conducted in private, away from prying eyes and ears. As a consequence, many victims rack up huge cell phone bills.

False Identities

• The scammers are notorious for using aliases featuring common English and Spanish surnames, like Johnson, Smith, Perez and Garcia.
• To evade intervention by money transfer services and the post office, victims are coached to also use aliases because they are seldom if ever asked to present identification at these locations.

Last but not least, the fraudsters want maximum bang for their buck, which is to say they try to use the money of current victims to lure fresh prey, a practice I call "baiting."

A classic example of baiting was the time my father wired money to a sixty-something nurse living in Virginia Beach. Because she claimed she could not afford the advance fee the crooks said, "no problem, we'll have a past winner (translation: loser) pay it for you." At their direction my dad subsequently sent her the funds, which she in turn relayed to Jamaica. It was a triple-win for the thieves, who besides getting cash from my dad, further covered their tracks while making themselves look credible to a new target, in the process.  

As Sun Tzu wrote In The Art of War, "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." After reading this post it is my hope that you will know the enemy well enough not to fear the outcome of battles you must fight, to protect your loved one from his schemes.

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 . . .

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 . . ."

The Other Cash Cab

As many of you know there is a program on the Discovery Channel called Cash Cab, an innovative production wherein passengers become contestants in a mobile quiz show. Sadly, there are other "cash cabs" making the rounds, that you should know about.

Specifically, I am talking about cab services engaged by Jamaican con artists to help them maintain contact with victims whose lines of communication have been severed by concerned family members.

As the guardian of a fraud victim embroiled in a Sweepstakes scam for over three years, I thought I had seen every trick in the book. Every trick, that is, until I learned about this ruse from DIDS and Joolz, whose testimonials inspired me to search for accounts of other "cash cabs" on the web, such as this one.

Knowing what I know now, the question is: What to do about it?

For my part, I am going to warn every cab company where I live, about this scheme.

What are you gonna do?

What's In A Name?

Not much - imagination, that is.

In my experience, Jamaican fraudsters display a lack of originality and a boring consistency in the aliases they use, which feature mostly common English and Spanish surnames.

As proof, I offer a sampling of the monikers employed by the scammers who ripped off my dad:

• Roger Richards
• Roger Roberts
• Claude Jones
• Jay Johnson
• Tony McGregor
• Robert Tyler
• Mr. Brown
• Mr. Washington
• Mr. Johnson
• James White
• Bob Bradshaw
• Alberto Perez
• Charlie Anderson
• Anthony Garcia
• Omar Smith
• Michelle Moore
• Paul Robinson
• Mark Ashley
• Pat Hilton
• Kevin Bailey
• Mrs. Anderson
• Earl Hickman
• John McKnight
• Mr. Fisher
• Marv Turner
• Victor Martinez
• John Fernandez
• John Mills
• Trisha Moore

Begrudgingly, I must concede creativity points to the crook who dubbed himself "Anton Ego" after the surly food critic in the animated film Ratatouille. Knowing full well my father had no clue who Anton was, by using his name the con man was basically giving my dad The Finger.

Given such cynical gestures, can there be any doubt how ruthless these criminals are?

The Blank Check Swindle

If you read this blog regularly, you've no doubt noticed a gradual decline in posts. The reason for this drop-off is not the dissipation of my fervor, but a lack of new material. There's only so much you can say about Advance Fee fraud and its perpetrators.

Sadly, I have something new to report: The Blank Check con. While  embarrassed that they snuck this one past me, I am not going to let my  embarrassment stop me from exposing the tricks the Caribbean slimeballs use to fool innocent people.

Thus here is an overview of the latest game the crooks ran on my father, who effectively has no access to cash:

1. They told my dad they would need a blank check to "verify to the IRS and FBI that the 3.5 million dollars are to be deposited in your account." (Huh?)
2. Instead of having my father send the check to Jamaica, the fraudsters had him mail it to a collaborator in the U.S. (the scammers are too smart to accept checks personally, but will happily let money mules receive them and take all of the risk).
3. The helper forged the check, cashed it, and sent the proceeds to the crooks.

Though it is unclear at this stage, I suspect that, like my father, the check-casher is being duped by the con men. True or not, this much is certain: He forged a check and will be prosecuted, because I aim to get my dad's money back, and because the threat of prosecution may be the only thing preventing the go-between from throwing his money away, too.

In summation, here are the takeaways from my latest encounter with the scammers:

• Never send checks or give checking account information to strangers, no matter what they promise.
• Do not accept or attempt to cash checks, from alleged sponsors or past winners of sweepstakes or lotteries.
• Do not wire the proceeds of such checks to strangers, either overseas or in the United States.
• If you are the guardian of a "scambler," restricting your ward's access to cash may not be enough; you may have to take away their checkbook as well as their credit cards.

So much for the Blank Check swindle. As with all the other schemes I have recounted in this blog, I hope that my father's loss is your gain.

Playing The Float

While I have alluded to it several times before, I am dedicating this post to a common technique Jamaican criminals use to dupe Sweepstakes scam victims: Playing The Float.

The reason I am doing so is that many Advance Fee fraud victims send money to crooks believing that they have been sent money, by them.

It is all a con game, of course, and here's how it typically works:

1. The scammer calls the target, and tells them they have won millions in a sweepstakes or lottery.

2. The fraudster tells the target that a fee - such as a tax or customs duty - must be paid in advance, to collect the winnings.

3. If the victim balks, the caller offers to pay the fee by sending a check, portrayed as an advance on their winnings. The check is bad, of course, and the crooks do their best to make it seem legit by pretending it is from a major financial institution like Wachovia Bank, or Bank of America.

4. The target is instructed to deposit the check and immediately wire a portion of the proceeds to Jamaica, or a payment processor (money launderer) in the U.S.

Here is what the criminals know, that most scam victims don't know: If you have enough money in your account to cover a check, most banks will cash it before it clears. If the check bounces the disbursement is considered a loan, and the account holder is held responsible for paying it back.

The crooks know this all too well, and consequently use the float - the time it takes to see if a check is good or bad - to extract cash from the innocent. Using this tactic, criminals can buy anywhere from 24 hours to six days.

Playing the float is clearly a scam because:

• No legitimate sweepstakes or lottery, requires winners to pay fees in advance, to collect prizes.

• Sending checks in exchange for cash doesn't make sense, at least from the victim's point of view. Why can't the sender simply deduct the amount owed from the their winnings? Answer: Because there are no winnings. Amateurish though they are, the criminals can still do basic math: They know that zero dollars minus fifteen hundred bucks, equals nothing.
  

It is important to note that rubber checks don't come just from the crooks: Sometimes they come from other victims acting on the criminals' instructions.

And - as I have reported in previous blogs - the fraudsters try to play the float by making phony payments by phone, on victims' credit card accounts. Needless to say it is absurd for a stranger to pay your $9000 credit card bill, in exchange for $300 cash. I mean, if I offered you a thousand dollars in return for fifty, you would either think I was loony or there was a catch.

To competent adults, the catch in the "more-check-for-less-cash" ploy is obvious. To vulnerable seniors it is not so apparent, which is why we must do everything we can to protect them from scams and scammers.

Torpedoed By Sunk Costs

Since becoming the guardian of a scam victim, I find myself muttering a lot. One of the things I mutter is, "How, after losing so much money, could my dad continue to send payments to those Jamaican sleazeballs and their American helpers?"

It took me a while to realize that the answer might lie in the question itself: Perhaps my father kept sending money because he has lost so much of it.

At first this idea seemed so absurd that I dismissed it out of hand. I couldn't reject the notion completely, however, for one key reason: Scores of unimpaired people - including me - throw good money after bad, due to a form of faulty reasoning called the Sunk Cost fallacy.

This phenomenon is well named, because those who fall prey to it continue to sink funds into losing ventures, on the grounds that if they stop, they won't recoup their investment.

In reality, the Sunk Cost fallacy is actually two fallacies, that:

1. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the spender's investment will ultimately pay off, and
2. Past losses justify future expenditures

Two wrongs don't make a right, of course, and no undertaking better qualifies as a loser than a Sweepstakes scam. Why victims cannot see this, escapes me. Yet they do not, and some become so psychologically invested in this losing game that nothing and no one, can keep them from playing it.

Unwilling to admit defeat and cut their losses, serial victims of Advance Fee fraud sometimes see no alternative but to keep paying the crooks' bogus fees, in the hope that someday their ship will come in.

Which it never does, because it has been blown out of the water by the Sunk Cost fallacy, and the criminals who exploit it.

Stemming The Flow

Given the limitations of what law enforcement officials can do, more than any other entity the major money transfer services are by far in the best position to deter Sweepstakes scams.

That is why I am mounting a campaign to get Western Union and MoneyGram to cease transmitting funds from the U.S. to Jamaica. If they want to allow Jamaicans to wire cash to America, that's fine with me. Lord knows they've taken enough out. Let them put something back.

While my expectations are low, it will be interesting to see how the Big Two respond. I can already hear their excuses for declining:

EXCUSE #1: "WE CAN'T"
No explanation offered, or provided upon request.

EXCUSE #2: "IT WOULD BE UNFAIR TO HONEST JAMAICANS"
Of course it would. But it would be eminently fair to millions of elderly Americans targeted by island slimeballs. Besides: Chances are good that the bulk of money transfers to Jamaica are crime-related, something I suspect federal officials and the transfer services know all too well. So what are we really talking about?

EXCUSE #3: "WE'LL LOSE MONEY"
Yes you will, but comparatively little, and your hands - and public image - will be cleaner for foregoing the dirty kind.

EXCUSE #4: "IF WE DON'T DO IT, SOMEBODY ELSE WILL"
Probably so. But whoever does won't have thousands of retail outlets nationwide, which will make it inconvenient for victims to send money to the Caribbean. And "somebody else will do it anyway" is not, and never has been, a valid reason for enabling criminals.

EXCUSE #5: "WE CANNOT DISCRIMINATE"
Right. We're not asking the wire services to discriminate against Jamaican-Americans, or some other subgroup of the population: We're asking them to stop conveying funds to a notorious hotbed of thievery, something they have every right - and perhaps a moral obligation - to do.

Western Union and MoneyGram are, by all accounts, reputable companies that provide essential services to multitudes of decent, hard-working folks.

As reputable firms, it is time for them to do the right thing and shut down the Jamaican pipeline.

Chalk One Up For The Good Guys

I am happy to report that law enforcement authorities in Colorado have arrested the man I believe is responsible for the extortion letters my father has been receiving (click here to see my previous post on the subject).

Not that I had anything to do with it, mind you. But somebody did, and I commend their efforts.

Here is a link to the article detailing the arrest, for anyone interested in reading about it.

Sophisticated Liars

On the face of it, there's nothing sophisticated at all about the scams Jamaican fraudsters try to put over on the elderly. To most of us, their come-ons are beyond unsophisticated: They're preposterous.

For all the silliness of their proposals, however, Sweepstakes scammers can be fairly advanced when it comes to the methods they use to play their outrageous games. One of those techniques is Caller ID Spoofing, which I discussed in an earlier post (click here to read it).

A lesser-known ploy used by the crooks is disguising their voice, a trick that helps them play multiple characters as they weave their web of lies.

By disguising their voice, I'm not talking about speaking into a handkerchief, like actors used to do on old cop shows. I'm talking high-tech voice modification, which can either be done through a unit attached to the phone, or with computer software used in conjunction with VOIP (voice over the internet) phone technology.

While there is no way to be sure whether a scam target is being preyed upon by more than one person (sucker lists have a way of getting around), there is a good chance that the alleged lottery official, FedEx woman, or FBI agent on the phone are all the same person, thanks to the modern technology of deception.

Conservatorship: A Scam Jammer's Last Resort

As I've noted in earlier posts, a small percentage of Sweepstakes Scam victims refuse to quit paying the bogus fees demanded by Jamaican fraudsters, despite all evidence to the contrary that by doing so, they will receive millions of dollars in return.

Because the odds of catching the perpetrators of Advance Fee fraud are slim, concerned family members of Scamblers (compulsive fake-fee-payers) have no choice but to try to stop the victim, whether the victim likes it or not.

Such was the case with my eightysomething father, who is a charter member of the Ornot tribe.

So resistant was my dad to our family's attempts to stop him sending money, that after exhausting every other alternative, we were forced to take legal action to protect my father from himself. Specifically, we petitioned the court to appoint a conservator, which is roughly defined as a "guardian appointed by a judge to protect and manage the affairs and/or the person's daily life due to physical or mental limitations or old age."

While the criteria for appointing a conservator may vary from state to state, I thought the similarities would be sufficient to make it worthwhile for me to walk you step-by-step through our family's journey of conservatorship.

1. We hired an attorney who specialized in Elder Law.

2. We obtained a written testimonial from my father's physician, that he was showing signs of declining cognitive function (without such preliminary proof, you're basically toast).

3. Citing the physician's testimony as evidence, our attorney petitioned the court to appoint a temporary conservator or guardian, to oversee my father's affairs.

4. The judge found sufficient cause to designate me temporary conservator, and made it official with Temporary Letters of Conservatorship, an important legal document authorizing me to take many of the steps necessary to protect my father against further financial loss.

5. The court appointed an attorney (called a Guardian Ad Litem, which we had to pay for) to represent my dad.

6. My father had to submit to a court-mandated psychiatric exam that I had to arrange, and our family had to pay for. It is ironic to say the least that my father was talking on his cell phone to the scammers less than five minutes before his appointment.

7. A private hearing (trial-like proceeding with only the judge, attorneys, and my father and I present) was held to determine whether my dad was an adult with an impairment, in need of a conservator.

8. I had to testify against my father, and undergo to a rigorous cross-examination by the Guardian Ad Litem, who did his best to discredit my testimony and have our documentary evidence (which consisted mainly of photocopies rather than originals) ruled inadmissible.

9. Despite the psychiatrist's assertion that my father was "high functioning and of above average intelligence," the judge wisely concluded (a couple of weeks later at a final hearing where he announced his decision) that my father was nevertheless impaired, because his irrational behavior and delusions of winning demonstrated a clear incapacity to exercise sound judgment in money matters.

10. The judge then ordered that an inventory be taken of my father's assets, to help determine who should be appointed permanent conservator of his finances. In our family's case, that turned out to be me - although in some instances, the court appoints a third party with a financial background, such as a bank official.

If there are any lessons to be learned from this (and I'm not sure there are), they are:

• Seek conservatorship sooner, rather than later.
  
• If possible, find an Elder Law attorney experienced in litigation (pleading your case in front of a judge at a hearing). Though it seems trivial, an inept litigator can make procedural errors that hurt your chances of a favorable outcome.
  
• Whether they are temporary or permanent, Letters of Conservatorship compel money transfer services, banks, and credit card companies, to cooperate with you.
  
• Document everything about the scam, that you can: Money transfers, checks, names, phone numbers, etc. Originals are preferable to copies.
  
• Keep a journal of everything you do about the scam, both before and after obtaining conservatorship: What you did and when you did it; who you talked to, when you talked to them, what you talked about, and what the outcome was.
  
• If local law enforcement authorities have cautioned your loved one about the scam, ask them to testify at the conservatorship hearing.
  
• Don't expect the victim to thank you, for protecting them.

Personally, I would not wish on anyone the experience of having to testify against a parent, particularly in their presence.

Unpleasant as it was, however, I am living proof that anybody can do it, and that this difficult task is made easier, but not easy, with the backing of a support network. That, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing without question, that you are doing the right thing.