Best way to bust a scammer?

I got a call last night from someone who said her company had found some CDs owned by my mother who died 20+ years ago. I instantly smelled scam and, lo and behold, the website link in her email goes to a non-secure website.

So obviously I’m not following up with her. My question is, is there a way to work with authorities to bust these assholes? Or should I just let it go?

Do you have any reason to think this person/organization is in the United States?

Most of these malicious operators are overseas and out of reach.

Sometimes.

The call came from a southern California area code, and the woman had no discernible accent. I know neither of those is proof that it’s a US operation.

Why was there a websites? I’ve had my own websites go insecure when I don’t keep up on my SSL certificates, so that doesn’t 100% mean it’s a scam, but the fact that she’s asking you to even go to a website is. What’s the point of that? But it also seems a really odd thing to scam about. I wouldn’t give a shit if someone found 20 year old CDs that belonged to either of my parents. Keep ‘em.

I asked her to email me so I could verify that her company’s legit. ISTM a company that specializes in financial matters should be able to maintain a secure website.

It’s supposedly a very large amount of money. Another reason I smelled scam.

Oh, so you’re not referring to music. :wink:

Yeah, that feels like we need to disambiguate between Certificates of Deposit and Compact Discs :wink:

In reality, wouldn’t the bank have turned the funds over to the state unclaimed property office before twenty years passed? (Though the scammer may not know that the mother has been gone that long.)

Still, you may want to check with the unclaimed property office of the states where your mother lived or held bank accounts. Perhaps there really is money?

That will show you that contextual acronyms should be fine. Golden or platinum records on CD are valuable and I for one would pay a very modest sum for some CDs with personal data I lost about 25 years ago.
Concerning the scammers I think it is seldom worth the effort to bust them; the chances are slim anyway – just keep them busy for a while and send them packing when you get bored of the game. Some people are good at it and have made YouTube videos of it, but if you have to ask us I guess that means you don’t know what you are doing (FTR: neither do I) and the learning effort could be considerable. And probably futile. Day-dreams about busting baddies and becoming a hero are nice to indulge in, but they should remain just fantasies.

Ah!!! Certificates of deposit. Never mind me then. This makes a hell of a lot more sense now. :slight_smile: My excuse is I didnt get caffeinated until about five minutes ago. Yeah, scam.

It is possible your mother has some unclaimed money still out there. These companies (usually lawfirms) make money by assisting you in recovering the money and then taking a cut.
You can bypass them altogether and see if there actually is unclaimed property out there and how to get it.

In all honesty, I can’t fathom why you even answer calls from numbers that are not on your list of contacts because at least 95% of them are solicitations and outright scams. However, you did, so on to the question.

First of all, the authorities who handle this type of thing are basically overwhelmed by the shear number of these things. They normally deal with established cases where people have already and clearly been robbed. If you contacted them about this particular issue, you have no real complaint to make at this point. I’m quite sure they would tell you to use your best judgment and, if you did contact them and did get scammed, call back with a concrete complaint. Law enforcement deals with crimes, it does not prevent them.

You can report scammers to the FBI:

It’s to help the FBI build up their database of scams to spot the ones that they should devote resources to trying to catch.

By the way, you should never click a link in suspicious emails. For one, the website can track which links were clicked and scammers will know which emails were valid. But more importantly, the website could have hacks that allow a scammer to put a virus on your computer or something like that.

One kind of scam that you can get the local police involved with are the ones where the scammer sends someone to your house to pick up money or gift cards. The ransom ones may be like this. It might go something like this. A scammer may call someone pretending to be their child in need of money. The “child” puts a “lawyer” on the phone who says he needs $$$ in cash as a retainer. He says that he’ll send a courier over to pick up the $$$. The courier will be part of the scam. If you get a call like this, you might consider contacting the police so they can apprehend the courier and take down the scammers. But most scams aren’t like this. They are done by people in foreign countries and would be very hard to track.

It was in the news a couple years ago. There was a major scammer doing all sorts of phone/internet scammery. Everybody assumed they were Bulgarian or something. Turns out they were in Greater Miami, the scammer capital of the USA. Busted!

Sometimes, certainly, but I think it’s worth noting that the reason that’s a news story is that it’s… well… news. It’s exceptional.

Sadly, genuine stories like this are a rare drop in a huge ocean. There is an unimaginably large population of scammers out there and law enforcement agencies are typically either unable to, or uninterested in trying to track down one scammer based on scant information from Joe Public.

The situation is not helped by the existence of more scammers claiming to be scam recovery experts who can recover funds and bring scammers to justice (hot tip: if you have been scammed and you are approached by some rando who claims they can put it all right, you’re dealing with another scammer).

Further reinforcing the myth of the scambusting white hat good guys, there are individuals popular social media who spin all sorts of tales that look like gritty investigative journalism, but are just works of fiction. (OK, a small proportion of those might be people who do actually have the skills and connections to do what they claim, but I believe the majority of them are faking it).

This exact thing happened to my wife. She got a call from some company saying there was lost money that belonged to her, and they could help her recover it. They just need her social security number, a photo copy of her driver’s license, etc. Turned out the money really existed, and the only “scam” was that the company would take a cut of the money.

She went to the state lost money site, submitted whatever was required to claim the money, and got all of it transferred to her own bank. It was an IRA she’d inherited, or something like that.

So agree with the previous advise, check with the appropriate states. That part is usually easy.

For me, it’s because I have a kid in school. If it’s a local number it could be from the classroom phone, the health office phone, the resource office phone, the principal’s phone, the receptionist’s phone… Most of those are in my contact list, but every year a new set has to be added. If it is a non-local number, then it could be a call from the cell phone of any of the teachers. So yeah, I answer every call…

To balance that, I have absolutely no need to be polite to a scammer. Even if it isn’t a computer, I’ll just hang up. No need to get them to stop talking, or to say goodbye or whatever. (Usually, I’ll just put my phone back in my pocket. They’re always gone the next time I take it out.)

Unfortunately for the OP, I don’t have any good advice. You can report unwanted calls to the FCC, and general scams to the FTC.

This is what “Isabella” told me, too, and after some more digging I’m actually not 100% convinced this is a scam.

Evidence it’s a scam:

  • The late-night call
  • The non-secure website
  • The LA address listed for the assets is just some house, not a bank
  • “Isabella” knew my sibling’s name, but not that she was my sibling, or what gender she was (she has one of those either/or names)
  • The large amount of money involved
  • The general look and feel of everything

But it might not be, because:

  • “Isabella” sent a link to a Better Business Bureau profile, which is on a legit BBB page, and has an A rating and several positive reviews (which could easily be fake, of course).
  • My father, who survived my mother by 15 years, lived in LA for the last few years of his life and would have established his assets with banks there.
  • He was the type who could easily have forgotten about these CDs, as they represented a small fraction of his net worth.
  • I haven’t been asked for any personal or account info – yet

So … should I call her back and see what the next step is? I fully intend to bail as soon as she asks for personal info.

Medical stuff, my parent’s medical stuff, consulting clients and vendors.

You guys came up with all good reasons. I guess I live a sheltered life. :thinking: