The Scam Redux

If you think it can't happen to you, read on…

image by Shutterstock

In light of some recent complaints of predators stalking the hallowed channels of Substack, attempts at scamming (the promise to send $5000, but first just send $100 “registration fee”), and day-after-day, men who “subscribe” to my newsletter but do not write articles themselves, nor do they comment on what I’ve written, but simply leave me messages like “Hello,” or “How’s your day going Patricia,” or even “I must confess that your beauty can make a disabled man walk again,” (sorta like that one even though it made me laugh), I’ve decided to post a piece previously published in Medium to encourage constant vigilance.

I have been cautious all my life, on the lookout for schemes to cheat me, steal from me, fool me with bait-and-switch strategies. I honed my skills on Italian pickpockets from the age of 10, and gypsies (or “zingari” as they were called in Italy) later on who would approach to beg with pieces of cardboard with writing on it held horizontally, and as I would be reading what was on the cardboard, their hands would be seeking my pockets underneath the cardboard for money, passports, airline tickets. I was expert at outsmarting all attempts to “get one over on me.”

Well, I’ve been gotten. And I’m eschewing all feelings of shame and embarrassment in order to give a blow-by-blow account of what happened to me recently. After the blow-by-blow, I will give another numbered report of my mistakes, starting with the first.

I was going through my daily check of email, full of articles I don’t want, never read, ads offering me special deals that I’ll never take. There was an email from PayPal. Now I use PayPal quite a bit for online purchases, and have had good luck even with returning unwanted things. In this particular email from PayPal, I was informed that perhaps there had been some unauthorized purchases using my account. Three to be exact, each for a $200 gift card to Walmart.

If I thought that these purchases had been unauthorized, I should please call “this” number. I called the number, and after giving the identification number of the case in question, was told that yes indeed, 3 gift cards to Walmart had not only been purchased using my account, but another 3 had also been purchased bringing the total of gift cards purchased to 6. At $200 each, the total came to $1200. “They” asked if I would like reimbursement of the $1200 or a credit. Reimbursement please. They would be happy to reimburse the $1200. Could I log onto my bank account? Then please go to my browser and enter www. some url.com; an app installer appears on my desktop. “Please click on the app and install. We will have access to your computer, be able to go to your bank account, and deposit the money. Is that alright with you?” “Yes.” “By the way, never do online banking from your cell phone. You may not have a secure internet connection. Always do online banking from your computer. And never answer telephone calls from numbers you don’t recognize. If the call is legitimate, they can leave a message.” “Now write down on a piece of paper how much you have in your checking account and savings account and keep those numbers safe.” “O.K.” “Now I will authorize a deposit of $1200 into your savings account. Is that alright with you?” “Yes.” Typing typing . . . what looks like a receipt appears on my desktop. The agent is typing in the amount to be reimbursed: $1200 . . . and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, another “0” appears! In addition to what I had in my savings account, suddenly there’s a deposit of $12,000! I see it in my account! The agent goes into a panic! “Oh no! Oh no! What have I done! I don’t know what to do! I’m going to lose my job!!. Wait just a moment! I need to speak to my manager and see if there’s anything I can do.” Comes back onto the phone. “Can you help me out, please. I’m going to lose my job if you don’t help me. My manager said there are only three ways you can help me get the money back: buy $10,800 — $12,000 minus your $1200 reimbursement — worth of gift cards, go to your bank and take out cash, or” (I forget what the third option was). Me: “But I am about to start work!” (I work remotely.). “Oh! No! No! Pleeezzzeee I’m going to lose my job! If you can do this for me, I will remember your kindness all my life. I will pray for you every day” (agent is quite clearly from India). “My wife and I will bless you all the days of your life! Pleezzee! All you have to do is go to 4 or 5 different stores and get 4 or 5 $200 gift cards from each.” (There’s no way I can go to 4 or 5 different stores and get gift cards and keep my afternoon appointments!) “Or go to your bank and take out cash, the cash that has been deposited into your savings account.” (Sounds like the quickest way to get the money.) “What do I have to do if I get the cash from my bank?” “Get a box, any kind of small box, like a shoe box. Get the cash, and if they ask you what it’s for, just tell them something like your daughter’s getting married, or you need the cash for the celebration . . . something like that.” Me: “Then what?” Scammer: “Come back home and wrap the cash in foil, then put the foil-wrapped cash into the box with bubble wrap if you have some. Then if you have an old T-shirt around, put that in the box also so the package won’t move around! Please Please. Hurry so I don’t lose my job!” By this time the guy’s panic has affected me. I’m imagining an immigrant, working for PayPal for a low salary, frantic because he’s going to lose his job, his five children looking up with hungry eyes. All I have to do is take the cash out of the bank . . . I saw for myself that $12,000 had been deposited in my savings account! I rescheduled my first appointment, got into my car and went to my bank and withdrew $10,600 in cash (this would be the $12,000 minus the $1200 I was supposedly being reimbursed plus $200 left for my efforts). When I ask the teller if I can withdraw $10,600 in cash (I had had more than that in my checking account because I was getting ready to pay the first two installments of my 2022 estimated taxes after getting an extension) the teller looks at me with just a bit of surprise, turns to a colleague next to her asking her if she can do that, and the colleague tells her it’s O.K. The teller goes to where a machine churns out $100 bills, and when there are $10,600 she puts the bills in an envelope and hands it to me. The scammer had asked me to keep him on the phone all this time, and to keep my computer at home open during this time so nothing can get in and interrupt the procedures. I have the small box, foil, bubble wrap and T-shirt in the car to save time, wrap up the envelope full of bills and tape it shut (the scammer is giving me instructions as I’m doing all of this: “Oh thank you! Thank you! You will be blessed, I will never forget you for the rest of my life!” I then drive to the UPS store, follow the fake agent’s instructions to sent it to a specific address in Jamaica, NY, to be delivered by 8 the next morning with signature required. UPS guy tells me they can’t get it there until around noon. Fine. They charge me $202.85 to ship it to Jamaica N.Y. with delivery receipt and signature required. I use my credit card. Off it goes. I get back into my car. Scammer asks me to take a picture of the receipt. I scan it with a scanner app on my phone, and send it to him. He gets it. Sounds soooo relieved. More prayers. More blessings. More remembering me for the rest of his life. He’ll pray for me. His wife and children will pray for me forever. He wants me to stay on the phone with him however, just to make sure there’s no interruption in the connection, and when I get home he asks me to keep my computer on, at least until I have to work. When I have to see my first client, he tells me that I can shut it down now, but pleezzee don’t log onto my bank account for 24 hours just to make sure that nobody tries to stop the withdrawal. And please please please! Don’t tell anyone about this transaction or he could still get in trouble.

I see a couple of clients. Start to come to my senses. Log onto my bank account. I’ve been cleaned out! About $1000 of the $13,000 I had had in my checking account that morning was left, and about $1000 was left in my savings account. The rest of it was gone. (I had had $13,000 in checking getting reading to pay estimated taxes, but not very much in my savings. Apparently what was done was $12,000 was moved from my checking account to my savings account to look like it had just been deposited. OR they were showing me a fake screen that made it look like I had an extra $12,000 in my savings.)

I finished with my last client. It was close to 5 p.m. I immediately called the UPS store. Packages had been picked up. I explained that I’d been scammed . . . could I ask for the box to be returned before it arrived in N.Y.? They’d do their best. “Unfortunately these things are more common than we’d like.” I have the tracking number on the receipt, and can track the box as it hopefully will be making its way back to me without getting to N.Y. The UPS guy encouraged me to call the police.

I call my local police. Am told that, unfortunately, these sorts of things are happening with more and more frequency. The officer who takes the report gives me his name and a case number and I give him the details including the address that the package was addressed to.

I call Apple and step-by-step and am taken through purging my computer of any foreign apps or possible malware that might have been deposited on my computer.

I then look on GoogleMaps at map of the address that was given to me, check out the police precincts near that address and call the first one I notice. I explain what happened. “Oh. This is the 103rd precinct. You want the 113th precinct for that address.” “I call the 113. Get a solicitous officer on the line who tells me with that amount of money it would be grand larceny (and I already know that committing fraud using the mail system is a Federal offense). He is very kind, takes down all the information and tells me he’ll be getting back to me. I also give him the name of the Mill Valley officer and the case number.

I call my bank and change my user name and password.

This morning I got the call from UPS. My box is back! I pick it up and the cash is there. Throughout the ordeal I was treated with respect, sympathy and care. Following are the numbered places during this entire saga where I might have stopped the whole ordeal:

1. The very beginning. If you get an email from a business you are connected with, even if the logo looks authentic, don’t ever call the number. Check your account itself to see if unauthorized expenses have been made. This screenshot looks pretty authentic, but there are some differences between this fake PayPal Invoice Update and an authentic PayPal document: the blue bar across the top is solid in the fake one. In a real PayPal invoice there’s a scoop under the PayPal logo in the blue bar:

PayPal will always address you by your full name (not “Hello, PayPal User”). Don’t ever let anyone into your computer unless it’s a representative of the manufacturer, and never if they’ve ostensibly contacted you first.

2. Don’t let strangers prey on your good heart. The other person I know who was victimized was another therapist, and she did not fare as well as I. It’s possible that they target therapists because we allegedly are empathic, compassionate and care about people. Another target population is the elderly. My neighbor’s mother, 80 and widowed, was recently scammed out of $54,000! Devastating. Scammers take advantage of older people’s often not being as tech savvy as any 9th grader would be today, and knowing that we just might believe what we’re told without asking enough questions (like “why does the cash have to be wrapped in foil?) Huh?

A film that deals with big business scamming is “The Bee Keeper.” Full of violence, but righteous violence with the good guy winning!

3. Don’t be a rescuer. If a stranger is pleading with you to help him not lose his job, tell him that you’re confident that he’ll find another job and you’ll see to it that the organization to which you need to refund money (PayPal) will get the money. You can’t sacrifice your job to help someone else keep theirs!

My initial reaction to this whole thing was FUCK! Since I don’t use expletives that often in my daily life, it’s all the more satisfying when I feel an occasion warrants it. FUCK FUCK FUCK! I quickly got over my feelings of embarrassment and accessed feelings of anger!

Thanks to my daughter for her caring and patient listening; the Mill Valley police department; the New York police department; the UPS company; Apple, my bank and everyone who has shown me nothing but understanding, compassion and care. And if you are moved to leave a comment, I would appreciate 2 things: if you can resist, please no statements of condemnation and criticism (I’ve already done that enough to myself) and no more advice unless you think it absolutely is something I either haven’t thought of myself or others haven’t already told me. I am saturated with advice. I have written this so others can be aware that there are some pretty sophisticated and tech savvy scammers out there. Virtual hugs and caring are always welcome though. And always: be mindful.

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