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.