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.