Posted on 01/13/2020 6:32:55 AM PST by Red Badger
Imagine you’re retired and your primary source of income is your monthly Social Security check.
Your telephone rings and an automated message says your Social Security number has been “suspended” because of some suspicious activity. You may even be threatened with arrest if you don’t call the telephone number provided in the automated message.
If someone calls saying that your Social Security number and the benefits connected to it may be in jeopardy, it’s understandable that you might panic. You’re told that to “reactivate” your Social Security number, you have to pay a fee or buy gift cards. You have reservations, but fear of being cut off from the money you so desperately need overtakes any reservations you may have.
So you call the number.
What comes next can be devastating.
“My mother is 76 and has early Alzheimer’s,” one reader wrote. “She received a call saying that her Social Security information was compromised and that the only way to rectify the situation was to buy $3,200 in gift cards to Target and GameStop and give the codes to an ‘employee.’ She was told the money would be deposited back into her bank account. Obviously, the majority of people would understand that this is a scam, but she is easily confused and gave away all of the money in her checking account. And once it was gone, there was no way to help her or recover the money.”
This Texas woman’s daughter, who wrote to me, said one store employee warned her mother that she was probably being scammed.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Say what you will about WaPo, they know a thing or two about scams. For example, WaPo has itself scammed sixty million people into believing that Trump is a Russian asset and that Putin got him elected. In fact, as the paper of record for the Deep State, WaPo is in the business of manufacturing consent, which is a big scam itself.
My mother, when she was in her later years with dementia, would probably have fallen for this scam, but if you think my siblings and I should have put her into a skilled nursing facility against her will, then you should be in that facility instead. Is there no respect for parents and the elderly anymore? It was very difficult for us to work out a schedule where we could take turns caring for Mama, but I am glad we did! I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Uh...no it's not.
She’s talented :-)
I like the one where she pretends to be Alexa.
I always hang up on robo calls, recordings and sales people.
If I have live person on the line, my first question is always, "Do I know you?"
To which they always answer, "No, but...." Then I finish with a strong, "I didn't think so" and hang up.
Hard to be scammed when you don't engage with them.
People who do that should be executed. They call people with dementia, or people who for some reason have remained trusting in their old age.
I favor public execution, and I would volunteer as executioner.
I get at least two calls a day from these scammers. Now they are leaving messages if I just hang up (same recorded message), which means they are evolving in their sophistication. I wish someone could invent a sound device that could project a harmonic sound across the lines and melt the sending phone or computer. wouldn’t that be nice?
One of my elderly relatives was scammed before this era by televangelist preachers.
She gave every cent she had to the rotten thieves.
Scams have been going on since there were people.
The DOJ just recently announced the prosecution of an Indian national residing in Florida along with many other co-defendants, living in India and the U.S., for this type of Social Security scam.
And yes, the people doing this are evil for they know they are preying on the weak and gullible. They never expect to get what they want with every call. Even if only 1% of those whom they call give in to their threats, they, the criminals still come out ahead.
But to families with elderly who have dementia and Alzheimers, one of you needs to have agreement in the family to be appointed by a court as legal guardian for your mentally challenged family member.
Unfortunately the only alternative for the mentally challenged elderly with no living close adult relative is an outsider appointed by a court as legal guardian, and that has the possibility of financial abuse by that guardian from unnecessary “costs” charged against the accounts of the elderly person.
Agree,facility is a bit extreme.
Constant supervision, for sure
National “Do Not Call” registration does nothing to stop the scammers.
I rarely answer the phone as i have caller ID. Sometimes, for the fun of it I answer and talk in Chinese. They hang up.
Constant supervision was what we had to do for her last two years. It was tough, really tough, but like I said, we wouldn’t have it any other way. We learned so much.
We all have cell phones and we still have a land line. It is weird. The land line rings and no one ever moves to answer it. It is pretty much for outgoing calls only now due to the incoming calls all being from people we don't know.
The big corporate phone companies are to blame for this. They have the tools and power to stop and block all these calls and DO NOTHING.
Shame on AT&T, Centurylink, etc
Yeah, the way New York City is now these criminals would be released with no bail...Just released...
I rarely pick up numbers that aren’t in my contacts - the times I do, if it’s a recording I do your ‘clunk” deal...if it’s a person, i interrupt their spiel and ask who they are and what the purpose of the call is...then, realizing I ain’t gonna bite, they do the “clunk”...
My wife will answer with, “Sheriff’s office, fraud department” and she also gets the “clunk”...
If you allow a demented person to live by themselves you are endangering their live. No kidding. I’ve been doing the caretaking for elderly relatives for about 12 years now. I’ve walked them through the entire process. Including having them sectioned because they are a danger to themselves
So, save your lecture for someone who knows the deal six ways to Sunday. Take care of your elders. And sometimes that means being aware of their finances and their living conditions.
If your mother falls for something like this, you are NOT taking care of them.
We had a long-running contact with a scammer, who from his accent sounded Jamaican. We had just won a large lottery that we hadn’t entered. All we had to do was give him our banking info to receive the money. There would also be some small fees involved in transferring our winnings. He was very entertaining and could just not understand why we were willing to walk away from so much money.
He called us every day for weeks. At one point I told him we had called our local FBI office to report him. To prove he was on the up and up, he put “an FBI agent” on the phone to talk to us. Oddly the agent also had a Jamaican accent. He finally lost interest in us and stopped calling. I did like his accent though.
Ok. Thanks for explaining
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