stopped?
Hardly. Some of them have gotten so bold that they've even contacted previous victims. Posing as Nigerian government officials investigating the schemes, they request an upfront fee to fund their attempts to recover the victims' money, thereby adding to the sum that needs to be recovered.
And they've introduced a new, easier-to-swallow twist. They send out letters that again mention the desire to move money out of Nigeria, but they don't ask for your bank account number or any sort of personal information. They simply offer to send you $4 million, or some such impressive sum, to hold in exchange for a commission. All you have to do is check "yes" or "no" in the boxes below.
Well, even if it's a fraud that sounds harmless enough. You say to yourself, "What do I have to lose? I just check 'yes' and if the check clears, I've got $4 million. If it doesn't, I've lost nothing, because I haven't given away anything."
When the scam artists get your response, they send you a beautiful, official-looking check drawn on the Bank of Nigeria. You deposit it. It gets routed back to the Bank of Nigeria, and in fact into the hands of the con artists. Of course it doesn't clear; it's a fraudulent check. But now the Nigerians have just what they need: your bank account number and your signature.
These schemes require a lot of mailings to seduce enough people to make them pay. You'd imagine that the Nigerians run up some pretty serious postage bills. Don't be concerned. They use counterfeit stamps.
UNMARKED AND UNREMARKED
Scams that prey on the elderly irritate me the most, particularly the ones that could easily be averted if someone in the know had only intervened. Here's one that goes on all the time. A little old lady pays a visit to her bank and makes a deposit. She doesn't notice two well-dressed men loitering outside, but they notice her. They follow her home. Once she's inside, they knock on the door. When she opens the door, they identify themselves as agents from the FBI.
"We believe an employee where you bank is stealing money," they tell her. "We'd like you to help us out."
"Oh, that's horrible," the woman says. "But what can I do?"
"We'd like you to go to the bank tomorrow and take out all of your money and bring it home. We'll pick it up and get it marked. Then we'll give it back to you to redeposit. If you help us, you'd be doing your government and your bank a tremendous service, and there'll be a reward for you."
It sounds like someone would have to be awfully credulous to bite on this one, but this scam has been going on forever and people still fall for it, and usually the people who can least afford to be ripped off.
I get angry at the banks over these schemes, because they don't take them seriously enough. When I hear about another one going down, I'll ask a bank officer, "This is an elderly lady. Why would you let her take out twenty thousand dollars or forty thousand dollars in cash?"
Their invariable reply is, "Well, it's her money. You can't ask too many questions."
I don't buy that. The real issue is that since the bank's not liable for the loss, it doesn't care enough to do something about it. As far as I'm concerned, that's not good enough. I tell banks, if an old person makes a sizable cash withdrawal, have an officer sit down with the customer and ask a few questions. If an officer simply asks, "Did anyone talk to you about marking bills?" that alone can be enough to foil a theft.
As you can see, all these scams are artful dodges meant to part you from your money. There's nothing occult about them. Once you know how they're done, they seem so rudimentary, little more than child's play. But they wouldn't still be around if they didn't work. With just a bit of knowledge and a healthy dose of suspicion, you can avoid their temptations.
Chapter 6
[CARD GAMES]
Outside Miami International Airport, a new rental car franchise opened up a few years ago, begun by several enterprising young men. It was billed as one of those Rent-A-Wreck places that rented less-than-perfect cars at lower rates than the major chains like Hertz and Avis. The deal here was an awfully tantalizing one: a wreck for ten dollars a day, and no mileage charge. People arriving on flights took a look