My dad fell for a phone scam....

[Enright3]

I’ve had two sets of grandparents get calls for a scam.
The scammer calls them up and tells Grandma & Grandpa that he is [grandchild’s name]. and he’s in a little bit of trouble. Then another voice comes on and says that it’s the police department and that [grandchild] was pulled over and had a little too much to drink. To get him out of this mess they can wire some money…

What’s amazing is that they knew the grandchild’s name and was able to associate it with the grandparents name. They even gave a call back number. The only reason my parents knew it was a scam was because my son calls his grandfather “papa” and the vague voice said "Grandpa.’

[Mama_Zappa]

@Riemann

I have also tried in vain to get somebody at my bank to explain the CC charge approval/denial algorithms.

I get email alerts for any substantial charge to my card, and I woke up one morning to see multiple fraudulent charges totaling about $3000 out of Spain. I live in the U.S., I haven’t been to Spain in 20 years; or to anywhere in continental Europe in 10 years, nor have I ordered anything online from Europe in that time.

I was concerned about whether I had inadvertently revealed my CC details to somebody untrustworthy, whether I was at risk of identity theft, so I asked my bank for a copy of the transaction records from the online merchant, which the bank eventually sent along with an affidavit form. It turned out that the fraudsters did not know anything about me or about the card, other than the 16-digit card number. Not my name or address (not even the country), not the card expiration date, not the 3-digit verification code. Yet large charges to an online merchant in Spain were approved, and could not be revoked even though I alerted my bank within 3 hours.

I refused to sign the affidavit, pointing out that there was no identifying information, and that the real question was why the bank approved these charges solely based on a 16-digit number that happened to be my CC number. I spoke to several progressively more senior people, and never got a coherent explanation.

The banks are losing billions to fraud, but seem to have hopelessly incoherent charge approval algorithms. It makes no sense at all to me why it’s not worth it for them to have state-of-the-art A.I., and, well, just employ a few smart people.

I’m puzzled by this too. Our card was frozen just the other day due to a fraudulent charge attempt on Friday. They actually emailed me but I didn’t see the email, and we continued to use the card until Monday evening when it was declined.

The charge was actually fraudulent. I’m curious as to how they determined it was, versus simply flagging the account and declining later purchases (as happened to us a month or so back).

The time a month ago, the charge really did look screwy: I’d gone shopping in New Jersey (we live in Virginia), and bought a large quantity of shoes which certainly should have tripped off the fraud flags. They let that charge go through, I guess because it was a card-present transaction versus the other day which was online.

The time that really annoyed me was when we were making a lot of individual purchases near home - it was Labor Day Weekend, and it was at places like Staples and kids’ clothing stores. Ya think we might have been doing some back-to-school shopping? Apparently the bank didn’t.

[Rick_Kitchen]

@Flyer

That’s hardly a realistic concern.

Are you telling me it didn’t happen? I was on the end of the phone!

[Mallard]

@wolfpup

Got a letter in the mail yesterday from France, which was kind of unusual since I don’t currently know anyone in France. The letter actually purported to be from a law office in Spain, but posted in France, and made the following interesting points:

• someone in Spain with my exact last name had died, leaving a “treasure box” with a Spanish bank that, on close inspection, turned out to have $11 million in cash in it.

• they have been unable to find any rightful heirs to the money. (Of course they couldn’t. Whether it’s a treasure box in Spain or a trunk full of gold in Nigeria, there is never an heir to be found. No one is interested. This allows the story to unfold, as it indeed this one did …)

• yep, this particular Spanish lawyer will now content himself with less-than-rightful heirs, and would like to know if I’m interested in receiving half of it (he will take the other half). Even though “we’re not quite sure” if I’m entitled to it, he “guarantees” that I will get it.

• if I’m interested, I should not hesitate to contact him through a Gmail account in which he misspells his own name. I understand that this is the standard way of contacting major international lawyers.

• in case I was wondering, he posted the letter from France because he’s there taking a seminar, and apparently typed it up on the spot and decided what the hell, I’ll mail it from here. But he will be home soon. It’s an interesting way of running a law office.

• I should have a nice day.

I should write back and say that I understand the problem – I’ve been corresponding with a couple of Nigerian princes he should talk to, who have equally frustrating problems trying to get rid of a trunk full of gold and $15 million on deposit, respectively. No one seems to want it. He and the princes could probably work all kinds of lucrative deals with each other.

My mother who just turned 98 got that same type of letter, however it was “only” 8.5 million and the lawyer was in Japan.

[gigi]

My father never acts immediately on what I say, I have to put the bug in his ear and hope he listens. So I am hoping he will change his email password to something different from his other passwords so that the same one doesn’t work for a financial site AND the email used to verify action on the financial site. :rolleyes: