So should I give them more money...?

[bankworking]

It's not that he was an SC, it was just...

Guy comes in because he wants to get his money back. Seems he was awarded a $10,000 "Grant" only he needed to send a $150 processing fee in order to get it.

Except then he was contacted because there was an issue, and they needed him to send them another $250.

And then they needed to clear up a problem with his credit, and it would be another $450. But they were going to increase his "Grant" to $13,000.

Except that didn't work either. It was going to take just another $450. Just this last time. Really. Then the grant money is his.

By this point, guy is finally getting frustrated. He feels like he is being scammed. So, he demands his money back. Forget the Grant. He just wants his money.

They are very sympathetic. Get him to a manager who tells him sure, they can get everything canceled. It'll just take another $250 fee and they'll have everything refunded.

This is when the customer comes in to me. He wants to know if he should send him the $250. By Moneygram. Overseas.

No.

Let me reiterate: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

It's just... he can't afford the money he's sent them, and he realizes it's a scam, and he just wants his money back.

It took me so very long to convince him that sending them more money was not going to get the money he'd already sent back.

Good and bad news: he withdrew the funds from his account as cash and paid them via these pre-paid giftcards. Good because he never gave them his account number, so does not need to get his account closed for security and set to a new number. (He also never gave them his social security number, thank goodness.) Bad because I have nothing I can even try to run a dispute on. Nothing fraudulent about him taking cash from his own account.

Only advice I could give him was to see if the pre-paid cards have a way to dispute the charges like regular credit cards do. It's his only hope of seeing his money again.

I also told him to stop talking to the scammers... and the various other scammers that had started to call him now that his phone number had been passed around as one to target. Maybe even to change his phone number.

He agreed... after he talked to the one who was supposed to call him back that afternoon to explain to them how he wasn't going to send them any more money and wanted his money back.

[MoonCat]

Well, this answers my question: Does anybody ever really fall for those things?

And now I know. They do.

Don't people like him ever ask themselves WHY? Why would someone he doesn't know, someone he's never had ANY contact with, suddenly decide to give him a "grant"? Why would complete strangers want to give him money? Didn't he even wonder where and how they got his contact info? Yikes.

[otakuneko]

Well, these scams would eventually disappear if no one fell for them. >.>

[EricKei]

Didn't he even wonder where and how they got his contact info? Yikes.

Shady marketers have lists of phone numbers the same way that spammers have lists of emails -- they can just call you and hang up immediately if you answer, as that confirms your # as belonging to someone, making it more valuable. Same basic thing with spam emails -- answer one, even via "unsubscribe", and your email is now worth much more.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

I know people like in this story are victims, that nobody deserves to have others come and rob them, but....does anyone else ever feel like some of these people are just asking for it? I feel sorry for the old ladies who get the phone call from their 'grandson' who needs money wired for a medical emergency in a foreign country, these people who need to pay a processing fee to claim their grant/inheritance/lottery winnings, not so much.

[Brojekk]

What he should have told them is to take that $250 from his grant and send him the remaining balance.

[Beowulf]

This sort of naiivete is pretty understandable, I'll admit. If it weren't for the fact that I've been in college as long as I have, I'd have probably fallen for this kind of stupid too. I can just imagine 18 y/o me seeing the email in my box and going 'whoopie! Mom, I need your info for something I found online!"

18 y/o me was not very smart...
And it really hurts to hear how much the SC gave away to these folks. T-T

[MadMike]

Well, this answers my question: Does anybody ever really fall for those things?

A friend of mine almost fell for a rental scam on Craigslist last summer. He had been trying to get a place outside of the city for himself, his wife, and their three kids. One day, he called me and told me that he found a really nice place, and he asked if he could use my computer to print out the forms. They were currently without internet access, so he was emailing through his cell phone. Naturally, I told him to come on over.

He started telling me about this great new place. It was owned by a couple who had moved to England because the husband's job got transferred. They had been trying to sell the place, but it wasn't selling, so they decided to rent it out. At this point, my scammer senses started tingling, as I was pretty sure I had heard this story before. I asked him if he was sure this wasn't a scam, and he said he was sure.

When I opened the email to print it out, I looked over it, and the more I looked at it, the more uneasy I felt. The English seemed off, although not nearly as bad as some of the broken English I've seen some scammers use. One thing that stood out was the reply when my friend expressed interest in the property. It started out with "Thank you for your great response!" Seriously, who the hell talks like that???

I started doing some googling, starting with the phone number. I didn't find an exact match, but I did get an article about scammers, which said that if the number starts with a certain prefix (which this one did), while it appears to be a U.K. based number, it's actually a number forwarding service, which will most likely forward to somewhere in Nigeria, and is most likely a scam. I pointed that out to my friend, and he started to get concerned.

Then I googled the property address, and found several real estate listings. My friend told me he was going to call the agent that was on the one listing and find out what was going on with this property. The next call, he called me to let me know what he had found out. Just as I had suspected, this was a scam, and this particular agent had dealt with it many times, including 2 or 3 times with this particular property. He thanked him for bringing it to his attention, and said he'd try to get the ad taken down, but he had never had much luck with that before.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Did this guy even apply for any grants of any kind? If no, that should've been his first clue that something was amiss.

And then he should just smack his head against the nearest brick wall until he's smart or dead, whichever comes first.

[An Haddock]

419 scammers are some of the lowest of the low. I had a client whose uncle (I believe he was in his 70's) had sent thousands of dollars in the sincere belief that he would be getting a million dollars back. To the point where he had spent so much money that he was about to lose his house. The family finally had to get power of attorney over his finances but I think the house was going to be lost no matter what they did, short of a financial windfall.

It's sad that people fall for these scams but the people who perpetrate them are a bunch of honorless dogs would should be strung up for taking advantage of people.

[bankworking]

Did this guy even apply for any grants of any kind? If no, that should've been his first clue that something was amiss.

And then he should just smack his head against the nearest brick wall until he's smart or dead, whichever comes first.

Problem was he HAD applied for some grants. He lost his job and was considering trying to go into business for himself.

[Cecily]

These scammers are the lowest of the low.

Some years back, I read about an elderly woman who was conned by one of those "inheritance" scheme. Then some other pr*ck of a conman contacted her and told her she could get her money back if she paid him. Of course she never saw one darn penny. From what I read, a niece or nephew got wind of it and stepped in, preventing her from getting conned by a third guy who was "investigating" the first two.

Then again, people can be pretty naive when they see $$$$ for free.

I have a LOT of deceased Nigerian relatives... pretty stange since my family tree is all nordic pine.

[dalesys]

I have a LOT of deceased Nigerian relatives... pretty stange since my family tree is all nordic pine.

Those Vikings got it everywhere!

[KellyHabersham]

This sort of naiivete is pretty understandable, I'll admit. If it weren't for the fact that I've been in college as long as I have, I'd have probably fallen for this kind of stupid too. I can just imagine 18 y/o me seeing the email in my box and going 'whoopie! Mom, I need your info for something I found online!"

18 y/o me was not very smart...
And it really hurts to hear how much the SC gave away to these folks. T-T

Same here......not sure if these scams were going around by e-mail when I was 18, but I was new to the Internet then and definitely would have fallen for something like this.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Same here......not sure if these scams were going around by e-mail when I was 18, but I was new to the Internet then and definitely would have fallen for something like this.

Of course they were. They were going around by mail long before the Internet. I know because I got one way back in the early 1970s. I should have kept it.