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How I got scammed out of $50k
- simonw 3y agoIf you read this and think "what an idiot" instead of thinking "is there any way a variant of a scam like this could work on me?" you're doing yourself a disservice.
- commandlinefan 3y agoActually my first thought was "my wife should read this just in case"... I guess I'm in the middle here?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- helsinkiandrew 3y agohttps://archive.ph/FvyNv https://archive.ph/FvyNv
- mlrtime 3y agoFor those that were curious and didn't want to read this long article. This is a very common scam. "Family Emergency Scams". https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/scammers-use-fake-emergencies-steal-your-money https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/scammers-use-fake-emergenc... The woman went to the bank and withdrew $50k in cash. The article makes no mention of the bank warning or asking any questions. Banks and Tellers absolutely need to be taught to warn people of these scams. It has saved many people in the past by just simply raising awareness.
- c-fe 3y agothe scam described in the article is very different from the one you link to. I can advise reading the article, its well written.
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoYes but then this means they have to ask what the money is for. When I withdraw a lot of cash, my standard answer is "to put under my mattress". I don't want to tell a random teller what I'm doing with my money.
- hn8305823 3y agoIn the US, if you are withdrawing ~thousands of $ in cash, and they ask you what it is for, and your answer is "mattress" or "no answer" then you can be 100% certain they will file an SAR. However, there are probably so many SAR's that they would only be useful as a data point on an investigation triggered by something else, or if you get them frequently. Also, if over $10k they are automatically required to file a CTR on that, but I bet those are even less likely to trigger anything by themselves.
- flerchin 3y agoThey'll file an SAR either way. Isn't a big deal.
- anthony88 3y agoBetter than asking what the money is for, even if the customer gives a reason like "buying a car", warn the customer that if someone on the phone or is unknown at your door asked you to do it urgently it's probably a scam even it they say they are from your bank/company/authorities.
- cassianoleal 3y agoAdvising a person of a possible scam doesn't entail asking them what they need the money for.
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoGiven the number of different scams, I doubt just saying "and beaware of scams" is going to be effective.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoThe article does in fact mention that the teller told her to be aware of scams.
- michaelcampbell 3y agoIt is much easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled.
- NikkiA 3y agoI had one on monday that purported to be my bank claiming it was calling to verify some blocked transactions £300 for amazon and £1000 in 'foreign travellers cheques'. It was pretty obvious from the start it was an attempt at a scam - my bank never uses a robocall when they call to tell me they've blocked transactions, but this was a 'press 2 to talk to our customer service', but they still went with the 'we have blocked them because they are suspicious'. I guess they're happy to point out that scams and such exist, because it plays into your paranoia that maybe you ARE being scammed by someone else, and increases your trust in the caller if they're warning you.
- Nifty3929 3y agoAll they want is for you to press or saying anything, to prove to themselves that a live person is at that number. Then you go on a list for increased scam attempts. They just call every number, most of which are dead. So finding a literal "live one" is gold. The real scam comes in a follow up. DON'T PRESS OR SAY ANYTHING. Don't answer, or if you answer by mistake, just hang up.
- SilasX 3y agoAll I see for that in the article is this part: >>The woman behind the thick glass window raised her eyebrows, disappeared into a back room, came back with a large metal box of $100 bills, and counted them out with a machine. Then she pushed the stacks of bills through the slot along with a sheet of paper warning me against scams. I thanked her and left. Giving you a generic warning slip isn't the same as "telling you to be aware of scams" -- most people lump that into generic background noise.
- Workaccount2 3y agoI once caught a older lady buying $2000 of google play gift cards from the service counter at a grocery store. When I brought it up as politely as I could, she paused and look concerned but then assured me that they were gifts for her grand kids graduations. I pushed back gently that she should call the police if someone asked her to buy those, but she nervously laughed and reiterated the graduation gifts line. I have no idea the outcome, but I do know it was in March and that here in America her grand kids almost certainly have iPhones. Really upsetting.
- geocrasher 3y agoIndeed. It's very, very sad. My best friend's mom recently passed. She had Stage 4 breast cancer and somehow survived for a decade in that condition. My friend's dad has always been "out there" in a sense, but now has full on dementia. While cleaning out their old office, we came across Apple Pay gift cards, all with their code revealed, stored in an envelope. $2500 worth, from people with very little to begin with. His Dad, with his dementia, had no idea what it was about, and his Mom is gone. We can only conclude that they were scammed. His Mom was a very sharp woman, but somehow it still happened. Very sad indeed.
- pwg 3y ago> The article makes no mention of the bank warning or asking any questions. The article, about half way in, indeed does say the bank teller which counted out the $50k warned her of scams. It is in this paragraph: > When I reached the bank, I told the guard I needed to make a large cash withdrawal and she sent me upstairs. Michael was on speakerphone in my pocket. I asked the teller for $50,000. The woman behind the thick glass window raised her eyebrows, disappeared into a back room, came back with a large metal box of $100 bills, and counted them out with a machine. Then she pushed the stacks of bills through the slot along with a sheet of paper warning me against scams. I thanked her and left. Note the second half of the second to last sentence: "along with a sheet of paper warning me against scams". The person being scammed ignored the bank's scam warning.
- Arrath 3y agoCurious that it was only an easily ignored piece of paper, though. Not even a short chat as to "how sure are you that you are withdrawing this lump of cash for a legitimate purpose"?
- pwg 3y agoAgreed, the bank /should/ have tried harder to point out the possibility for a 'scam' occurring here (and of course this would eventually evolve into a discussion of "how much is sufficient"). But the article does admit that the bank did warn her, she just ignored the warning (and I don't recall her saying why she ignored the warning on the sheet of paper).
- prawn 3y agoWasn't the scammer on a live call in her pocket, listening in? In which case, a warning on paper might've been the best way to secretly convey the message. And also give her something tangible to review at multiple times before the money was handed over?
- flerchin 3y agoI can only think that this is an early sign of dementia, or that this person is so wealthy that $50k doesn't make them think at all.
- notachatbot123 3y agoNo need to jump to those negative conclusions. This type of scam is very effective and can catch anyone. The attackers trick is to psychologically create a sense of urgency and alarm, whilst providing a solution that makes sense in the scenario they create. It is not easy to not fall for that.
- flerchin 3y agoIt cannot catch anyone, or even most people. It obviously catches some. Literally what happened is "Hi it's me the CIA, give us your money." And she did.
- notachatbot123 3y agoLiterally not what happened. What happened was: - "Amazon" called about suspicious activity - "Amazon" transferred to "FTC investigation" - "FTC investigation" transferred to "CIA" This layered approach is key to the tactic. People are much less resistant to manipulation than they think, as is obvious in the current political craziness.
- flerchin 3y agoIt would be interesting to get the numbers from the perpetrators. What do you imagine their success-rate to be? I think it's quite low, probably sub 1%.
- ejb999 3y ago>>This type of scam is very effective and can catch anyone. I disagree - most people would never fall for this obvious scam.
- notachatbot123 3y agoThe scam here was threats through external calls, pretending to be authoritative agencies (FTC, CIA). The scam would have been prevented if the person had actively sought contact to those agencies to validate the claims of the callers. Never trust someone who calls you with extreme, urgent bad news. Use validated, known means of contact for whoever they pretend to represent and validate.
- dboreham 3y agoMany years ago I experienced a "false negative" event like this: two different people called me claiming to be FBI agents. Of course I laughed and hung up. A couple of weeks later a car pulls into my driveway, two dudes wearing mirrored sunglasses get out, introduce themselves as FBI agents. I ask them to show me credentials, which they do. Lesson: you can just hang up on all calls purporting to be from federal agencies. They will show up in your front yard if they really need to talk to you.
- hgomersall 3y agoThis is almost always true. If it's important, they'll try again.
- kkielhofner 3y agoAnother "trick" for this... How many people know what [insert federal agency] credentials look like? I have a friend who is one of the 2k IRS Criminal Investigation Division agents in the entire country. He's full-blown armed federal agent a la FBI, etc. He tells me it's very common that when he goes out to do an "interview" people say he's not real and they're calling the police, slamming the door in his face. The local cops show up, check him out, and then go back to the door with him. In his area he (of course) personally knows many local cops and they'll show up laughing "Oh another one, huh?". It doesn't bother him at all and I seriously doubt a scammer/impersonator would stand around waiting for the police to show up and then have the gall to try to con /them/. Additionally, they have undercover vehicles (of course) but when he goes out for interviews like this it's in the classic "Oh yeah that's a cop car" vehicle with US Government license plates.
- 3y ago
- sneak 3y agoPeople tell themselves all kinds of things to maintain their internal narrative about themselves. This person claims not to be a rube, yet engaged in many rube activities. They knew about number spoofing but ignored it when told. They knew about checking with an attorney, but didn’t do so. So many points at which they could have stopped this and didn’t. They aren’t nearly as sophisticated as they claim in the opening. Also, in general, you should already have cash stashed away, outside of a bank, in case this or a million other things actually happen. Your assets can be frozen without warning or evidence against you. Going to the bank to withdraw large sums because some guy on the phone claiming to be an authority says so is always stupid.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoThe vast majority of people are far less intelligent / sophisticated when stressed.
- ejb999 3y agoIn fact, 50% of people have a below average IQ, even when not under stress.
- sneak 3y agomedian != mean
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Detrytus 3y agoActually, median == mean for IQ, and for any other thing that follows normal (Gaussian) distribution.
- krapht 3y agoDepending on the context, any representative measure of central tendency, such as the mid-range, median, mode or geometric mean, can be called the average.
- strict9 3y ago>At about 12:30 p.m., my phone buzzed. The caller ID said it was Amazon. I answered. This is a terrible story and I feel for the person affected. The lesson here is that there's no reason at al to answer any inbound phone call if it's not a personal contact. There are only two reasons someone you don't know may be calling you: - to sell you something - to scam you If it appears important like your bank or a government agency then call them back and do not answer. There is no upside and a potentially disastrous downside for trusting an inbound request of any kind.
- jollyllama 3y agoThere are absolutely reasons to answer inbound calls. Job seekers will hear from recruiters they haven't heard from yet and heaven help you if you miss a call from a government agency because you'll be waiting on hold for a long time when you call them back. Like anything, there are tradeoffs.
- brianwawok 3y agoRecruiters can email or leave voicemail Government always sends letters, can’t think of a time the IRS has ever called me. But they sure send me a lot of letters.
- jollyllama 3y agoUnemployment agencies can call to ask questions about your application and it'll go quicker if you pick up. Often it's important for people to get the unemployment money quickly.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hn8305823 3y agoAnother example exception: Yesterday I ordered an Uber to go from a hotel to the Airport. Immediately after connecting with a driver I get an inbound call from another state. I'm the type that never answers inbound calls unless it's in my contact list and even then I might not answer and let them leave a VM or follow up with a text. But I made an exception in this case due to the timing and my desire not to miss my flight. It was the Uber driver clarifying the pick-up spot.
- tekla 3y agoTitle > The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam. JFC, the best kind of Rube, the one who isn't even self aware at all. My 70 year old parents became suspicious when their bank (lolno) asked them to wire $30K to cover fake legal fees, how do you fall for this shit?
- strict9 3y agoYou never know how you will respond to a situation until you are in it. In this case the scammer threatened family and seemed to have inside information on the victim. Instead of victim blaming it's important to spread awareness of how this happens in the first place: answering inbound requests: phone, email, social media, etc. Best not to answer cold contacts of any kind.
- TehShrike 3y agoFolks here seem happy to dunk on her, but her brother's take seems more reasonable: > It was my brother, the lawyer, who pointed out that what I had experienced sounded a lot like a coerced confession. “I read enough transcripts of bad interrogations in law school to understand that anyone can be convinced that they have a very narrow set of terrible options,” he said.
- dublinben 3y agoUnlike an interrogation, the author could have stopped this ordeal at any time by turning off or simply not answering her phone.
- imgabe 3y agoPeople can stop an interrogation at any time by asking for a lawyer or just not answering any questions.
- beaeglebeached 3y agoI did that. Then they got a federal search warrant by making up a dog that supposedly smelled something, said there must be drugs hidden in my GI tract, dragged me to the hospital and then sent me the hospital bill when nothing was found. You can stop answering questions and they keep dragging you to more hospitals racking up your debt. This whole time I was 'not under arrest' so I had no real rights, but apparently DHS can drag you to hospitals cuffed for 'emergency medical care' without an arrest. On another occasion feds came to my house to investigate a neighbor. When I refused to talk they waited until I was shutting the door and stuck their fingers in to try and get me for assault as it closed. Thankfully I caught the door at the last millisecond and just stared at them blankly with the door cracked until they left.
- commandlinefan 3y agoThe solution is to severely limit the power of the federal government... but at least in the United States, every serious political party is working over time to do the opposite.
- mattw2121 3y agoFirst, she was called by Amazon. First full stop -- these companies don't care about you enough to call you. Second, they transferred her to an investigator with the FTC? Then they transferred her to someone with the CIA? Then that CIA agent said, "Withdraw 50,000 in cash, put it in a shoe box, and put it in a car that pulls up in front of your house."??? I know we aren't supposed to blame the victim, but Charlotte Cowles has no business being a "financial advice columnist".
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoI disagree with the latter. A victim of financial crime is exactly the sort of person who knows how to get to the people that most need advice on handling potential financial crimes. They lived it, they can speak to the fear/shame/anxiety/etc. m
- suddenclarity 3y agoAmazon has called me on three different occasions. The third time I didn't pick up so they sent me an email saying they couldn't reach me. So getting a call from them isn't out of the ordinary. Everything else though...
- UncleMeat 3y agoI find it interesting that the software community tends to be so big on things like blameless postmortems and root cause analysis that understands that "just train somebody not to fat finger a SQL query on prod data" isn't nearly as effective as actual systems that prevent bad things from happening yet the response here can be "wow this person is just too dumb to live."
- mattw2121 3y agoI'm not saying "wow this person is just too dumb to live." I'm saying this person shouldn't be giving financial advise to anyone.
- Workaccount2 3y agoThe real crime in this story is that telcos still haven't stopped the ability to spoof caller ID. In a just world her phone provider would be liable for the stolen money, along with all the other stolen money as a result of spoofed caller ID. It is absolutely batshit insane that this is still an issue. Fucking fix it. Yes I am aware of STIR/SHAKEN, it should have been completed 20 years ago.
- beaeglebeached 3y agoIm amazed she pulled the money out so easily. A few times I've bought shitmobile cars for 5k+ plus cash and the teller always spends 5 minutes typing up a SAR before they hand it to me and always interrogate why and seem annoyed. WTF bank does she have that they just grab 50k no questions asked?
- tsunamifury 3y agoMost? Where do you bank that does this?
- gaws 3y agoShe likely had to speak to a bank manager and return on a different day to retrieve the money. Of course, it's not possible to pull out that much cash from a regular teller.
- Timothee 3y agoAccording to the story, it all happened in the same afternoon and she was able to get the money on the spot, albeit going to a different floor.
- Hucklederry 3y ago[flagged]
- michaelcampbell 3y agoI've been excoriated for IP-blocking all of .ru, .ch, and .hk from my funzies, recreational website about a particular game as "racist". Don't care, it's eliminated 99% (I did the math once) of all the hack attempts to it.
- ericbarrett 3y ago> .ch Switzerland?
- kevmo314 3y agoProbably thought they were blocking .cn ...
- michaelcampbell 3y agoActually I know I'm blocking .cn, I just mistyped it.
- kr0bat 3y agoSome people lack an ear for accents, especially if they're subtle. Personally, my ear is so bad that I get Brazilian accents mixed with Eastern European accents; and west African accents mixed with Carribean accents.
- brlewis 3y agoIt's possible that most commenters here are right, that the writer just has inferior reasoning capabilities compared to us, and that there's no way any of us could possibly fall for such a scam. But I think it's more likely that there are techniques scammers can use to incrementally build trust, and that the rest of us would be wise to watch out for such techniques being used against us. Quote: If it was a scam, I couldn’t see the angle. It had occurred to me that the whole story might be made up or an elaborate mistake. But no one had asked me for money or told me to buy crypto; they’d only encouraged me not to share my banking information. They hadn’t asked for my personal details; they already knew them. I hadn’t been told to click on anything. The writer had carried on entire conversations with Krista and Calvin which lacked a scam angle. This wore the writer down to where she was more receptive to the stories being told to her. This is a warning to the rest of us to keep our guard up even after such conversations. When I posed this theory to Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies coerced confessions, he agreed. “If someone is trying to get you to be compliant, they do it incrementally, in a series of small steps that take you farther and farther from what you know to be true,” he said. “It’s not about breaking the will. They were altering the sense of reality.”
- fatnoah 3y ago> The writer had carried on entire conversations with Krista and Calvin which lacked a scam angle. >"How much money do you have in your bank account?" These scammers were good and had finesse, and the incremental approach is 100% effective. This one also plays on the "know your customer" horror stories that people have likely heard about accounts being frozen. One has to stop every now and then to find the big picture and ask questions like why money in a bank account has to come into play, or to note that getting more detailed and in-depth are often signs of spinning a tale vs. telling the truth. That's also hard to do when you're probably in panic mode. The callback from the spoofed phone number is very good, but also revealing. The fact that they called the victim and not vice versa, or that the call came from the main number are all clues that something is amiss. > “It’s a government number,” he said, almost indignant. “It cannot be spoofed.” This is something that should be taught. I only know how easy this is because I worked on messaging/telephony apps and an occasional misconfiguration while testing resulted in me sending texts or initiating calls that appeared to be from a completely different number than the one I was trying to use.
- stefantalpalaru 3y ago[dead]
- max_ 3y agoThis was very funny to read given that I had just watched Jason Statham's Bee Keeper movie that was based on scammers.
- tehwebguy 3y agoThe story is obviously made up. Someone trying to become the main character or something. Maybe covering up a debt that is more embarrassing? There are plenty of scams where someone calls unannounced, but the idea that they are going to have willing Enemy of the State style targets with such predictability that they can have people on the ground doing cash pick ups, and also never getting caught, is simply less credible than like any number of alternatives IMO.
- simonw 3y agoBooking a courier to drive to an address, accept a box and then deliver it somewhere else isn't difficult at all.
- pavel_lishin 3y agoI also feel like OP forgot how organized crime actually operates. Number one, yes, they can drive a car somewhere and pick up a box. Number two, of course they'll get caught eventually - but this is like saying that car thefts don't happen, because obviously car thieves would get caught.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoSure is a lot of victim blaming in here from people who have no understanding of the psychology of how getting scammed usually works. Scammers often ramp up the unreasonableness of their scams slowly. It starts out fairly reasonable, often with something urgent so as to induce stress. Then gets less so in small increments. People are inherently vulnerable to this. All this ego-stroking(this would never happen to me, this is all her fault for being stupid and naïve) is frankly just asinine and immature. Hell, if you really think that, you're probably a prime target. This could happen to anyone. Instead of victim blaming, which only makes it harder for people to share stories like this, we should be humble and constructive.
- UncleMeat 3y agoWe've even got one that blames it on her being a woman. Thankfully, this is flagged and hidden.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- BenjiWiebe 3y agoI disagree with the part about it happening to anyone. Some people are really suspicious by nature and have read up on many forms of scams - a scammer will be hard put to pull a fast one on them. Those people are a small percentage of the population though.
- thomasjudge 3y agoVery brave of her to share this story, no doubt knowing that she would be subjected to the derisive and critical judgments such as some of those here
- gaws 3y ago> Very brave of her to share this story It makes for good content. The story will go viral, and she'll likely get compensation (and more) with the help of real government authorities or generous donors.
- max_ 3y agoWe forget to rationalize when under stress. Her son, husband were brought into the mix so I see how anyone could have fallen for this scam.
- Saris 3y agoI think the biggest protection against this kind of scam right now is just treat every incoming call or message as untrusted. Since caller ID spoofing is just left completely unchecked by the government and telcos. Anyone who calls me out of the blue is a huge red flag, I don't engage with them other than asking what they are calling about, if it sounds like something real then I hang up and call back through the public listed number of whoever they claim to be.
- slowhand09 3y agoI would never believe anyone could be this stupid... until my stepdaughter was scammed out of $12k in a very similar way.
- EZ-E 3y agoThe scammers seem so talented, I wonder how good they would do in a legitimate career in sales. If you can convince people to hand over 50k$ in cash to an unknown man in a car - what can't you sell?
- prepend 3y agoIt seems like the main defense to this is to not have cash. We all seem smart until we’re unreasonable. I don’t expect I’m stupid, but if someone threatens my kid, I probably get real dumb. But if I don’t have cash, I don’t have cash. So the solution is to have failsafes so if we start getting cash to put into a box, someone questions us and convinces us that handing $50k into the window of a car driving by is a bad idea. This person is brave for writing about how stupid they are.
- ghaff 3y ago>It seems like the main defense to this is to not have cash. Which has its own set of problems. Various mechanisms to hold and transfer large amounts of cash largely anonymously have already largely gone by the wayside (e.g. bearer bonds). Read some spy or financial novels for a few decades ago sometime.
- nichohel 3y agoHere are audio recordings from actual conversations I had with scammers trying to pull a "family member in distress" scam: http://main.interstice.com:8090/?p=49 http://main.interstice.com:8090/?p=49
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoNo HTTPS? Hmm, it's been awhile on that.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoAlright... I understand, anyone can get scammed, these scammers know what they're doing and all that, but come on. One fine afternoon you're on the phone with a CIA agent telling you to pull $50K out of your account and put it in a shoe box and hand it to some random dude in the street, all it would've taken to avoid this is to stop, breathe, think about what is happening and it would have been clear.
- danso 3y agoLast night I stayed up late to crunch on a deadline, so my brain cells are slower than usual...but did anyone else not realize on first read that, according to the author, happened in a just SIX HOURS? > That morning — it was October 31 — I dressed my toddler in a pizza costume for Halloween and kissed him good-bye before school. I wrote some work emails. At about 12:30 p.m., my phone buzzed. The caller ID said it was Amazon. I answered... > I met the SUV at the curb and put the money in the back seat. It was 6:06 p.m. Even if I’d tried to see who was driving, the windows were tinted and it was dusk. He maybe wore a baseball cap. When I turned around, I could see the backlit faces of my husband and son watching from our apartment nine stories above. As I walked back inside, Michael texted me a photo of a Treasury check made out to me for $50,000 and told me a hard copy would be hand-delivered to me in the morning. The amount of convoluted bullshit that the "CIA" and "FTC" investigators fed her, I automatically assumed that developed over the course of a week at minimum, as do many Nigerian prince/pig-butchering scams in which the scammer ends up geting to know the victim's personal life (and sources of funding) as well as an actual close friend. Withdrawing $50,000 in cash from your bank in a single day between taking your kid to school and then trick-or-treating is impressive enough under any circumstance. But I can't imagine hearing and processing all that bullshit (nevermind believing it!) in a single day
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoDefinitely a fair point. Although I think that's the only way the story works. That said, the part that caught me was that the bank was happy to hand her 50k... ? With just a paper about scams? IDK, I wrote an 8k cashier's check awhile back and the manager came out to make sure I wasn't sending it to a Nigerian Price. Her bank must do a lot of cash volume to not blink at 50k taken out mid-day with no questions asked.
- arsh4151 3y ago[flagged]
- tptacek 3y agoI don't think this happened. Too much of it doesn't add up. I'm especially hung up on going to a major US bank and asking to withdraw $50,000 on no notice, with minimal ceremony. At the least, they'd be filling out a SAR, right? I am speaking from some experience with large (and carefully papered, unlike this one!) transactions with Bank of America. The suggestibility details in the story don't add up. She attempts to verify the CIA agent, is told to check an incoming number, knows that incoming numbers can be forged, but buys that government numbers can't be? There are too many places in this story where we're asked to let the author have it both ways: she knows something is wrong, specifically, but is going along anyways. It's not at all clear why she couldn't call the police; it's just stated, at one point early in the article, that she concluded that she couldn't. What's the rationale for that one? The scammer might be in the local police department? Like Agent Koutris in Season 2 of the Wire? I'm also hung up in the scammers showing up, in person, in a Mercedes. They have not in fact hacked this person's whole life (that isn't really a thing), so they don't know that the police haven't been contacted. But they're showing up, at her house, in a car probably worth more than the $50k that they're hoping to collect. Here I have just a basic Bayesian problem: the Venn diagram of people who can cough up $50k who won't contact the police, such that the handoff is a setup, is slim. It's not that it's impossible; it could happen. But the base rate is very low. As a strategy, that is a very effective way to lose a white Mercedes SUV. I'm registering a prediction that another shoe is going to drop on this story. Two pieces of corroborating information that are gettable: * The police report that she says was filed on October 31 is a public record subject to FOIA. * The handout her bank gave her about "not getting scammed" when she withdrew the 500 $100 bills should be available to anyone who asks.
- idlewords 3y agoI agree with you that this part is fishy as hell. I can swallow the Mercedes (pay a random dude money to collect the box without reading him into the scam), but not the part where she strolls into a BoA branch and gets $50K on demand while on speakerphone with her scammer.
- tptacek 3y agoI'm on a Slack trading stories about trying to take 5 figures in cash out of major banks, and (1) all of them are more complicated than getting stacks --- you get neat little envelopes, btw! --- at the teller, and everyone has stories about things escalating to managers and getting quizzed about what was going on, and (2) nobody has ever seen this supposed high-dollar withdrawal room or floor in a major bank (in fact: if you're doing HNW banking, you're less likely to see bulletproof glass, not more). I think the Internet is hypnotized by the debate about how dumb you have to be to get taken by a scam like this. Smart people get taken by these kinds of scams all the time. The story is directionally and importantly true. But I think it's almost certainly false. I've got a FOIA out for the police report. Someone should roll into a Citi or Chase and try to pull 50k out on no notice next week. I bet they freak out. One person I talked to was told they had to give advanced notice to take $15k out. And pay attention to the timeline given on this story! Everything had to have taken place between the hours of 2:00PM EST (when she got the call) and 5:00PM EST (when all the banks in Brooklyn close). At 6:00PM EST she's home giving the money to the guy in the SUV, who she's not allowed to look at, because he's UC. On Halloween. And the scammers picked the day to do this on. Come on.
- SebFender 3y agoI check on my mom and her finance about every week. As I said to her and others many times - don't do anything before calling a relative or the police. The simplest check can save you great pain - really simple when you think about it.