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81-year-old man driven to death by phone scammers

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Re: 81-year-old man driven to death by phone scammers

#91

Post by scrubby »

JamesBarney wrote: post #81
wahsd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think there is some other maybe even unidentified kind of mental issue going on with this kind of scam. I say that because I know of some people who are locked into the Iraqi dinar scam and simply cannot see what is going on in spite of being otherwise ostensibly smart and intelligent people. Maybe it's "greed" , but it seems to me that it's more of a vulnerability due to hopes and dreams not matching topic…

I don't think it's greed. I think it's hope. Most of the people I know who fall for these scams are not any dumber or greedier than other people I know. They do seem to be much more optimistic and positive though. Think if this same person has late stage cancer and believed they were gonna make it despite all odds it would be an inspiring lifetime movie. But unfortunately I think these are the same people who also be…

I agree. In my grandfather's case, he was keeping this all a secret because he wanted to surprise his family with financial help from his "windfall." Something I think he always wished he could do, but never had the money to do.

Re: 81-year-old man driven to death by phone scammers

#92

Post by toomuchtodo »

nadams wrote: post #73
adekok wrote: post #50

Once the relatives get wind of this, there is a simple solution. Get a new phone number for the person in question. And even more critical don't cancel the old one . Put an answering machine on the old one, and have a "safe" relative check it every other day or so. Give the new phone number to family and friends. After a few weeks of getting nothing but answering machine messages, the scammers will go away. If the ol…

> Once the relatives get wind of this, there is a simple solution. Get a new phone number for the person in question. And even more critical don't cancel the old one. Or an even better idea - transfer the number to a reputable VOIP provider and setup the number so that it rejects calls from all numbers except for the ones you specify. Your loved ones can still call but any other scammer would get a busy signal or wha…

We could build this with Twilio.

Re: 81-year-old man driven to death by phone scammers

#93

Post by granos »

wahsd wrote: post #66
scrubby wrote: post #21

My 85 year old grandfather didn't commit suicide, but he was taken for every penny of his meager life savings by the Jamaican lottery scam. My dad discovered what was going on, called the police, but was told there was nothing they could do. My grandfather firmly believed and probably still does that he had won the lottery and was just waiting for a payout. We basically had to revoke his phone privileges to keep him…

I really think there is some other maybe even unidentified kind of mental issue going on with this kind of scam. I say that because I know of some people who are locked into the Iraqi dinar scam and simply cannot see what is going on in spite of being otherwise ostensibly smart and intelligent people. Maybe it's "greed" , but it seems to me that it's more of a vulnerability due to hopes and dreams not matching topic…

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. - John Steinbeck (disputed)

Lots of otherwise reasonable people are willing to delude themselves for a shot at a windfall.

Re: 81-year-old man driven to death by phone scammers

#94

Post by nadams »

forgetsusername wrote: post #5

>" targets nearly 300,000 Americans a year, most of them elderly, and has enticed them to send an estimated $300 million annually " In this case, the scammers took advantage of an elderly man, inflicted with Alzheimer's and diminishing mental capacity. Sad. But that can't be the case for the majority. How on earth do "normal" people fall for this? I can see, maybe , when the internet was young and this was new. But i…

> How on earth do "normal" people fall for this?

How do people fall for phishing scams or running malware from an email attachment? The answer to that question is the same to yours. I think it's a combination of lack of public education about scams and the belief that the email or phone call is legit.

And I think it's really interesting. A lot of people talk about "infected" PDFs - I've personally never seen that but what I usually see are:

invoice.pdf.exe

invoice.pdf.js

Most sane email providers should scrub that attachment (or bounce it) - however email providers such as AOL don't. Thanks AOL.

I run my own email service and I get emails like these all the time [1]. And if you are someone who takes the tollway daily it could be a scary email that you open right away.

I do want to mention Amazon's practices. So it appears their system glitches and spews out this email to random people [2]. This email is plain text and, at least the last time I logged into my account, has no indication that they want this information (it does say that "functionality is limited" but those instructions that say to login to the site and submit your information are incorrect which immediately makes me think it's a scam - it even has typos that you would find on a scam email!). It's even been reported that customer service says that it is a scam. However, it is real and an easy template to scam people out of their identity. For less than the cost of a cup of coffee at starbucks you can get an 800 number from a VOIP provider with faxing ability. I've contacted Amazon about it....and they just sent me the same email back. Thanks Amazon. (You don't know how tempted I am to write a cron job that faxes a copy of my drivers license to them every hour)

[1] http://i.imgur.com/GH46n92.png

[2] https://gist.github.com/nadams810/cb1a85514484c2659f1b

Re: 81-year-old man driven to death by phone scammers

#95

Post by nadams »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #92
nadams wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once the relatives get wind of this, there is a simple solution. Get a new phone number for the person in question. And even more critical don't cancel the old one. Or an even better idea - transfer the number to a reputable VOIP provider and setup the number so that it rejects calls from all numbers except for the ones you specify. Your loved ones can still call but any other scammer would get a busy signal or wha…

We could build this with Twilio.

No offense but I didn't mention a specific VOIP provider on purpose.

However, callcentric already has it built and much easier to understand than twilio. I'm not saying that service is bad - but the average person doesn't know what API, cloud, or SIP means (or care). Callcentric makes it pretty obvious what their service is and provides and how to use it.

Re: 81-year-old man driven to death by phone scammers

#96

Post by saint_fiasco »

DanBC wrote: post #79
saint_fiasco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to tell because the old people who are more sophisticated and know a lot about money are usually the kind of people who keep themselves mentally active in their old age. That means they are both more sophisticated and physiologically more mentally healthy. It's hard to separate the two.

That's not how dementia works.

What part? I'm almost sure the part about being mentally active to delay dementia is true.

Does that only work on Alzheimer's disease, and not dementia in general?

Re: 81-year-old man driven to death by phone scammers

#97

Post by PythonicAlpha »

In a documentary, I saw lately (in Europe), one person did not kill himself, but did loss weight and was sent to hospital for inquiry, but nobody did find out what was wrong ... after he died, they found out, that he simply did not have the money to buy food and was so ashamed, that he did not tell anybody.

It was a different scam, where the victims where enrolled in regular lottery gambling (with a monthly rate) and the twist was, that when they found a victim, it was enrolled in more and more games (every game costing maybe $50-100) which where just automatically drawn from his bank account. Even when the victims objected ... the letters where simply not read by anybody.

Re: 81-year-old man driven to death by phone scammers

#99

Post by toomuchtodo »

nadams wrote: post #95
toomuchtodo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could build this with Twilio.

No offense but I didn't mention a specific VOIP provider on purpose. However, callcentric already has it built and much easier to understand than twilio. I'm not saying that service is bad - but the average person doesn't know what API, cloud, or SIP means (or care). Callcentric makes it pretty obvious what their service is and provides and how to use it.

I specifically mentioned Twilio because anyone can build a custom solution to address this problem.

Someone already has done this (with Twilio) to win the FTCs RoboCall Challenge: https://www.twilio.com/blog/2013/04/twilio-powered-nomorobo-...

I also like Twilio ;)

Re: 81-year-old man driven to death by phone scammers

#100

Post by aikah »

hippo8 wrote: post #24

Since the NSA is by default monitoring calls, I wonder why they cant do anything about this? (:p)

Because despite all the propaganda, they are not here to protect you, the people but the government or whoever is in power. I'm sure the NSA could have prevented some school shooting but unlike terrorism that threatens the government directly, mass shooters do not.
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