Hello Everyone,
Parents got a scam call today. Caller claimed to be my 14 year old son, their grandson. Said he’d been arrested and then a “police officer” camenon the phone saying my son could be released if they would pay a $5,000 bail. Thankfully my dad isn’t stupid. He said it didn’t sound like my son, but the scammer said he had a cold. Dad the told the “cop” if grandson needed to be bailed out he’d call a bail bondsman. Caller then hung up.
Google tells me that this is a common scam. So, warn your elderly parents. Also, while I’m sure must of these scams are originated over seas have any of these scumbags ever been caught and prosecuted?
My mother-in-law fell for this one. When she answered the phone the guy said, “Hi, Grandma.” She’s usually pretty savvy about this kind of stuff. The payment method was with ITunes cards. She lost a couple of thousand dollars. The good news is that although she’s not rich, it caused more embarrassment than financial hardship. The calls she got were from a Canadian cell phone.
I’m sorry that happened to your MIL. What seems weird to me is that someone could be savvy enough to know how to give someone $2K worth of iTunes gift cards but not savvy enough to know that policemen/bail bondsmen don’t take them as payment. I mean, seriously, that’s a lot of 99 cent songs.
Some one tried that with my grandmother years ago. But they said it was her oldest grandson (me) and that they were out of the country and lost their travelers checks and needed money to get home.
But she knew it did not sound like me, and that I would know that she did not have money and I would call my parents and never call her.
This happened to my mom a few months ago. “Hi Grandma, I’m in jail.” They pulled the “I have a cold” trick when she said it didn’t sound like my son. Although my mom is not very savvy about things like this, thankfully she didn’t fall for it.
A friend of mine fell for this - twice.
They called him the first time and said “Grandpa, I’m in jail in Mexico,” and when he said “Zack, is that you” they said “yes, this is Zack.” They took him for $4,000 and then called back again later and did it again for another $4,000. I think they may have tried again, when he finally got a clue…
I understand what your saying about who’s being un/savvy but I think the scammers sell them on ebay or one of the other gift card sites, can probably get up to 90¢ on the dollar to use wherever they want & not have to buy music.
My 87 year-old mother got this call and she said the caller claimed to be her grandson. She thought it was a prank rather than a scam and told the caller that whatever reason they had for putting him in jail it was probably a good one, that he should spend some time thinking about what he had done, and jail time would probably do him some good.
My parents (85 and 80 years old) have gotten these calls more than once. Fortunately, they’ve never fallen for them. I think my father denied having any grandchildren.
To address the GQ portion of the OP, in this CBS News piece someone who perpetrated one of these scams (and was prosecuted for it) is interviewed on camera.
Not a scam, but my Uncle called my Grandfather once and said he was in jail and needed money for bail. Grandpa’s response was "Hey Kenny, what kind of bird doesn’t fly? A jail bird! Click
Thanks for all the replies. I’m sadden to hear of the people who lost money. Btw, when I said my dad isn’t stupid I wasn’t implying that those who sent money were, just that my dad’s a pretty smart guy and usually thinks things through before acting.
That happened to me about 10 years ago. I got a facebook message from a college friend saying that her and her husband (used his name) were in London and he was mugged. She asked if there was any way I could wire her some cash. Not much, she just needed enough to buy new plane tickets and some odds and ends to get back home. It was odd that she contacted me of all people, but I figured I’d do what I could. I could certainly loan a friend a few bucks for a few days, right. [FTR, I’d never heard of this scam] So I said “How do I know this is you?”. While I was waiting for a reply, I called a few other mutual friends…at 6am, that I hadn’t spoken to in years, to see if they knew anything, but no one picked up their phone. She replied, that I could send it via Western Union and she’d need an ID, right?. Made sense, then I said ‘What floor did you live on in the dorms and what did you do to your dorm room that everyone always noticed right away?’ Very easy questions for her.
“She” unfriended me, at that point I figured this was probably fake. When I went to facebook’s help section they had a section, specifically, for reporting ‘friends’ contacting you from a foreign country claiming they’re on vacation, getting mugged, and needing money to get home. Well, that answered that. So I reported her profile.
It also dawned on me that ‘she’ unfriended me to make sure I couldn’t write anything on her wall to warn people. ‘She’ also reported my profile, presumably because it locked me out of my account and I couldn’t warn people even from my account.
Oh, and getting calls back over the rest of the day from people I hadn’t seen or talked to in nearly 10 years was interesting.
While it may technically be traceable, there’s not much you can do when someone downloads a bunch of songs to computer in India or walks into a Apple store 1000 miles away and buys something with the number you gave them. All they need to do is drain the money from the account without connecting it to their actual name (or do it in a country where our government isn’t going to come and track them down).
On the one hand, I’m curious how long it’ll be before Apple works on finding a way to stop this beyond a disclaimer on their site that says not to buy these for people claiming to be from the IRS. OTOH, it’s not their fault or responsibility and they must be making a ton of money from it.
