The Real ScamDemic

A very large call centre in Lakeland, FL. Photo by Petiatil (talk) on Wikipedia-en., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Have you ever answered a call from a number you don’t know and heard a recording telling you that you owe the IRS money, and the marshals have a warrant for your arrest? Or maybe you have simply heard about this scam, if they haven’t managed to find your phone number yet. Maybe you heard about it, but it seemed so preposterous that you thought “no way I or my loved ones fall for that crap.” That’s certainly what I thought.

My mother-in-law is 70. She normally lives alone, but has been spending the colder months of the year at my sister-in-law’s house to save money on heating bills. My sis-in-law and her husband are both teachers with a school-age child, so my mother-in-law (we’ll call her Colleen, not her real name) is alone during the day. This was not a concern, because Colleen has her faculties in order.

We thought…

And then the other day she received one of those calls. It was a number she didn’t recognize, but she answered it in case it was someone calling to tell her a COVID vaccine was available for her. Instead, she got a recording telling her she owed the IRS, was under investigation for money laundering, and that the US Marshals had a warrant for her arrest. If she wanted more information, she should press 1. She pressed one.

Piecing together details second-hand from my sister-in-law, I learned that Colleen was told the following:

She was under investigation for money laundering and drug trafficking in Texas (she has never been to Texas.) She owed a lot of money, and if it wasn’t resolved immediately, she would not get her social security next month. If she didn’t pay as much as she could right then, they’d be there to arrest her. If she hung up the phone, they’d be there to arrest her. She needed to get them the money by purchasing gift cards and giving them the numbers; she needed to go buy them immediately, but she had to stay on the phone with them the whole time, or they would be there to arrest her. No, she couldn’t talk to her daughter first; this was a confidential matter and if she told anyone, they’d be there to arrest her.

She believed all of this. She followed their directions, cleaning out the entirety of her bank account by purchasing gift cards (3 at $500 a piece at Target, and another $400 at Family Dollar, of all places) and reading the numbers off to them.

My sister-in-law, Tammy, found all this out when she got home from work yesterday afternoon and found her mom in obvious distress. She told her everything. By then, even the Target cards were emptied. And then these ruthless, pathetic, sleazebags called back. Tammy answered this time; much cursing ensued. This time the man said he was her “neighbor” — giving the name of the town where Colleen’s own house is, not where she is staying. Tammy told them to come on over. Apparently, they called back several more times through the evening, once while my husband was on the phone with his sister.

Tammy called the state police while I got in touch with my contacts at the state AG’s office. We both reached a dead end; we could file a report, but there was really nothing they could do. The small, local bank Colleen has used for 30-plus years was no help, either. She purchased those gift cards “of her own free will”, so there was nothing the bank could (or would) do to help her. Meanwhile, Colleen is still terrified the next day, convinced someone is coming for her. I’m not sure whether she still believes she is going to be arrested, or if she fears the scammers themselves.

The following day my sister-in-law had to go to work, but she came home early. Which was a good thing, because right about then, these brazen, human-shaped chunks of earth worm slime called back again. They’d had a change of heart, you see. They wanted to meet Colleen face to face and refund her money. They asked for her home address. When Tammy got on the phone and offered to meet them at the police station to sort things out, they thought better of it.

My mother-in-law is shaken and paranoid now, on top of undoubtedly feeling like a fool. Fortunately, she is only out $1900. Unfortunately, that was all the money she had. But now our whole family is left reeling, wondering if my mother-in-law at only 70 years old is already showing signs that she can’t be left on her own. None of us thought she was naïve or gullible enough to be taken by someone like this. In fact, Tammy took her to the doctor the next day, convinced something was wrong. The doctor sent her to the ER when he heard what had happened and that she was still not convinced of her safety. A full workup including MRI didn’t show any obvious neurological problems. Hard as it is to believe, she was simply conned and fell for the scam.

I called my own parents to make sure they knew better; I was sure they did, but just in case. They told me they got these calls daily and they just hung up. I was reassured, but these scammers never stop coming up with new ways to steal. I told my mom to please promise she will always call me before giving out money over the phone. She dismissed the idea that she could be fooled; she knows all about these scam calls and always hangs up. But you never know when a new scam might pop up, one she has not heard of, and she might not catch on as quickly as she might think.

I don’t know why I wrote this except to say, watch out for your elderly loved ones. We tend to still think of them as older and wiser, even though we are all grown up now. It’s hard when the tables turn, and even harder to accept that our parents, in many ways, need parented. The competent people on whom we were once totally dependent become people who can’t be trusted, left to their own devices, to look out for themselves.

Still, you may think that your parents are too savvy to be taken in, especially when the scam seems so patently ridiculous. They probably think so, too. Don’t underestimate the power of fear, though. Arrest; the threat of withheld social security checks needed for survival; the embarrassment of thinking you have unwittingly committed some crime, and having to tell your family. These walking giant bags of feces are good at what they do, and they wouldn’t do it if the scam hadn’t proven successful.