Scammers and Fraudsters From Sea to Shining Sea - The Wall Street Journal

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‘Even paranoiacs,” said the truly paranoid poet Delmore Schwartz, “have real enemies.” I am neither a poet nor a paranoid, but I believe I have real enemies. I refer to the various people who call on both my landline and cellphone and send me bogus emails, all in the hope of cheating me out of money. Unlike the ultra-Orthodox Jewish private detective who was said to be on the case 24/6, these people work 24/7. I have had phone calls from some among them as early as 7:30 a.m. on weekdays and as late as 11:20 p.m. on a Sunday night.

The other day, opening my computer, I was greeted by an announcement, pretending to be from Amazon, asking if I had really purchased an $899 Samsung television set that had been charged to my account. Since I hadn’t, the query, which came in with a Gmail address, was meant to send me into a panic about the scoundrel who had been buying things under my name, but intended really to send me into the dirty-fingernailed hands of the swindler who here pretended to represent Amazon.

Roughly two hours later I had a phone call from a young man purporting to be my grandson, who, the caller claimed, had been in a car accident and needed money urgently to cover the costs of the towing and damage to his car. “Where shall I send the money, Archie?” I asked. When the voice on the phone began to answer, I mentioned that I do indeed have a grandson but his name is Nick, and hung up. The people who set up these elaborate hoaxes, I am told, specialize in cheating older people, a category under which I qualify. The assumption here must be the older one is, the less likely to see through the scam. People suffering even mild dementia are especially vulnerable.

Two scam phone calls followed the fake Amazon email: one purportedly from Social Security citing complications on my monthly check and urging me to call a phone number immediately, the other asking me to renew the warranty on a car I haven’t owned since 2015, perhaps (I do not exaggerate here) the 200th such call I have received about this fictitious warrantee. Later in the day another caller—East Indian accent included at no extra charge—called to mention the $299 fee I owed for a recent installation of an imaginary bit of Microsoft software on my computer.

Then there were the calls from various charities—true charities or not, I do not know—which showed up on my caller ID under fake names (“ Charlie Zucker ” was one) with area codes matching my own. Who knew the country contained so many rogues, frauds and pure stinkers out there trying to do me out of my money?

Easily the most elaborate scam attempted on me was an ostensible request from a reader of mine, with whom over the years I’ve exchanged a number of pleasant emails and once met for lunch, who in an email sent under his name wrote to ask a favor. He was, he explained, out of town, and thus unable to purchase for his niece’s birthday three iTunes gift cards, which he wished to send her online. Would I be good enough to do so? The outlay for the discs came to $300, which he would repay me as soon as he returned home.

I sensed instantly that this man, a gent, would never ask such a favor, and so did nothing about it. Two days later I received an email from the man himself—as, I gather, did a number of other people—stating that he had been hacked and hoping I hadn’t fallen for the scam perpetrated in his name.

I know I am not alone in receiving these fraudulent phone calls and emails. They seem to be part of modern living, a damnably unpleasant part. So relentless are these scams that one wonders how many people work to bring them off. (100,000? Perhaps many more?) The thought of these people setting out to work each morning to cheat their countrymen is less than cheering. Something has got to be done about it. But what?

I am not usually for big government, but I wonder if stopping all this scamming isn’t a perfect project for the federal government, since I gather these scammers work across state lines and many of them between continents. I wouldn’t, à la the Biden administration, call putting a halt to this vicious finagling “infrastructure,” but it is surely a nuisance and one that has doubtless resulted in financial ruin for lots of innocent Americans, many of them elderly.

Surely it would help to let it be known that the creeps working at these various scams will, if caught, be subject to prison sentences and whopping fines. The clear message would be: Let not only the buyer but the thief beware.

Mr. Epstein is author, most recently, of “Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits.”

Journal Editorial Report: The week's best and worst from Kim Strassel, Bill McGurn and Dan Henninger. Image: Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

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May 24, 2021 at 04:20AM
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Scammers and Fraudsters From Sea to Shining Sea - The Wall Street Journal

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