Posted on 11/15/2014 10:45:26 AM PST by PROCON
SEATTLE -- The letter promised millions, claiming a Publishers Clearing House winner, and was sealed with Attorney General Bob Ferguson's misspelled name.
"In the value of $9,222,350.00," Marjorie Flatum read.
The 90-year-old widow had to do one simple thing to claim her prize: send money.
"First I gave them $70,000," she remembered. "That was my retirement savings."
It was "federal deposit insurance" the scam artists promised to return, but then they asked for more.
This time, Flatum took out a reverse mortgage on her home for $300,000 - the home her husband built with his own hands.
(Excerpt) Read more at nwcn.com ...
Hah! Our attorney told Hubby....I’m surprised you haven’t killed her yet.
Greed causes many people to fall. My wife’s aunt fell to a Jamaican Scam.
The main issue is, “What do we do with/to the perpertrators of this scam?”
Also, someone needs to sit down with the bankers who made the $300,000 home equity loan. They may not have had a legal obligation to counsel her but they did have a moral one.
BTW, my elderly folks got caught up in the preliminary phase of a scam, but they only lost about $600. I went to to the presentation and asked a few pointed questions of the presenter.
He gave me that “Uh oh, we got a ‘live one’ here” look then changed the subject.
“Hope & Change” and “You are owed lots of money” can be as seductive as “Hey, sailor, are you looking for a good time?”
And just as hollow a promise.
I was conservator for an elderly aunt. I had to document every expenditure to the probate court. That was fun. With her lazy siblings looking over my shoulder.
But, with a power of attorney I can do anything with my mom’s assets. She doesn’t care, and my siblings are far away and not involved.
I could see someone with money problems, who was greedy...it would be tempting to someone who was not concerned with their soul.
Word to the wise, involve all of the interested parties and document everything. I keep track of my time and expenses. Anyone could walk in off the street and see where every nickel went.
I am sorry to hear what happened to you. People should learn from both of our stories. Because as the boomers get older, this story is going to be repeated a thousand times over the next twenty years.
Beware “green dot” scams.
Local couple got a call their grandson was in jail, needed $4K to get him out. They were told to send CVS giftcards or something like that with a green dot (supposedly untraceable).
Exactly!!!
IF you are the winner of that much money, the first calls should be to an attorney and/or financial planner before laying out any money at all.
I know one college grad, in IT, that fell for the $4K winnings!! He wanted to get rich quick and be out of debt but ended up losing his home and wife. Greed-failure.
The thing about confidence rackets is that the con man presents an opportunity, and the mark does most of the work convincing himself.
A shame.
My Father got the “I am in Jail” call shortly after my mom’s death.
They had grandson’s name right and his nickname for my Dad.
I figured the Bassturd got all the info from my mom’s obituary
You haven't met the miserable bitch who I have the misfortune of calling my sister-in-law. Blew through several hundred thousands of my FIL in less than 3 years. He was down to his last 10k when he died. The only upside is that I'm finally to the point where I get to watch the tramp implode now that the gravy train has finished its route....
“But one does not do that to their parents.”
My son and his GF hit me for 5k after saving their asses, and giving them a home for them and their two sons for 8 mos. The curb is not a nice place to be even you if you took the family silver ware also!
Was all I had My relatives stepped up and got me through the rough times! So you can imagine my will!
I will save you the Daughters actions which were not any better!
aren't the old supposed to be wise?....isn't it an old phrase that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is?....
I saw this happen myself with an aunt who was once a businesswoman and nobody's fool. She kept close track of every penny all her life. However, she also suffered from depression sometimes. When she grew older and became widowed, suddenly she had these new, younger "friends" who always needed help; they kept coming around asking for money with all kinds of sob stories. She was writing checks to them. Completely out of character for her. Luckily a family member stepped in and put a stop to it.
These stories make you wonder about humanity - do the good outnumber the evil, or vice-versa?
Gruber’s house was the return address.
She agreed to it. It’s the L(l)ibertarian/lawyers’ party way.
Bingo!
Greed IS stupid!
After 3 years in probate court we know the ins and outs of poa’s, trusts, etc. everything she did was illegal but no one cared.
I’m sorry, but ..... *sigh* .. OK, there is just no justifying this level of stupid. None.
I used to wonder however what sort of people would fall for what I would see right off as such obvious scams, thinking only truly stupid or feeble minded or insanely greedy people would ever fall for them.
Then a few years back my older brother who is not at all a stupid person, a good conservative guy and not someone I would think of as gullible (unlike his wife, my SIL), but after having been out of work for quite a long time and pretty desperate for work, and having posted his resume on line on Career Builder and Monster, he got an email for a job offer for printing invoices from home and mailing them to their US clients. It was allegedly from some “international company” allegedly based in Switzerland, and the email explained it was cheaper for them to email PDF’s of their US invoices to a US based contractor and for that contractor to print and mail here rather than for them to mail from overseas. They would pay him something like $15 per hour plus expenses, guaranteeing him at least 25 to 30 hours of work a week. Not so much a ridiculous amount to necessarily make one suspicious.
My brother had previously worked at a print shop and thought that’s why they were interested in his resume. They didn’t ask for any money up front, but in fact told him they would send him a very generous check to use to buy supplies up front; a laser printer, labels and envelops per a list they would send him, but that he would have to send them back the difference in no less than one week.
When he told me and his daughter about it, we told him that it was a scam and to not go through with it. At first he didn’t believe us. But bit of internet research on our part, and of his son who my niece and I called, on the name of this supposed company brought up all sorts of scam warnings.
Basically what this scammer and other similar ones will do is mail a fraudulent check drafted on a foreign bank account that either didn’t really exist or didn’t belong to the scammer (a high-jacked account number taken from a real canceled check from real company that had been “washed”).
The person falling for the scam will deposit the check and wait for their bank to “clear it” which it would at least according to their bank, because they’d see the money in their account after a few days or up to a week later, then they would go out and buy the supplies and then under the terms of the contract, wire transfer back via something like Western Union to the scammers, the unspent portion of their up fronted expenses, often to the tune of several hundred dollars.
But it often takes time for a bank, even if they initially “cleared” or credited the deposit to your account to find out it is not legit and then reverse the deposit. In the meantime, you’ve wired money out of your own personal funds back to the scammer. And even worse these scammers will also ask for things like your SSN and DOB and your personal banking details so they can “direct deposit” your pay and expenses. And to make matters even worse, you’d get an email with a supposed PDF attachment of your first batch of invoices to print and or embedded links that contain nothing but malware. So you basically end up paying a scammer to steal your identity under the pretense of a job offer. EVIL!
Fortunately my niece and I were able to convince him it was a scam before any damage was done, before he had replied to the scam job offer.
I occasionally get these scam “work from home” emails, which usually end up in my spam box and get sent right to the trash bin. I also on rare occasions get one of those Nigerian emails. I read them because they are so ridiculous as to be funny. But the sad thing is the reason these scams continue to exist, while most people recognize them as scams, sending out millions of these emails, it only takes a very few people to fall for them to make it profitable for the scammers.
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