My Dad Just Lost $2500!!

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Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:51 pm

I am so angry right now, I can hardly type. My father just called me to say he'd been scammed out of $2500. Here's the way the scam went down:

Dad got a call from a young man claiming to be Dusty, one of his grandchildren. According to Dad, this young man sounded exactly like his granson, Dusty. But in all fairness, my father is a little hard of hearing, and he's a man of few words, so I doubt he had a very lengthy conversation with the young man. "Dusty" told dad that he'd been arrested, and he didn't want his own father to know, so he needed "Grandpa" to bail him out. He needed $2500 wired to the jail. "Dusty" said he and his friends got pulled over by the cops, and one of his friends had drugs on him. Earlier in the week, Dusty had mentioned he was going skiing somewhere, so Dad must've thought he was still on this "skiing trip."

At one point the "arresting officer" got on the line to tell dad that they'd checked out the nearest place for him to wire money to them, and gave him two nearby towns. Dad took the money out of his savings account, and drove to Arcola to wire the money. When he arrived back home, Cody had come to visit. Cody is Dusty's brother. Dad began to relate the story of Dusty getting arrested, and Cody said, "That's strange, because when I left home he was doing his homework in his bedroom."
The brick struck, and the whole sordid scam came to light. Dad called the police, and they told him his money was "just gone." Turns out the money went to Italy. Once they pick up the money it's all over.

According to the police, these scammer have lists & lists of people and all their personal information......evidently, including children, grandchildren, parents, etc. What was working in the scammers' favor was the fact that Dusty was to have, indeed, been out of town somewhere around that time frame, and he was also to have helped his father install a new water heater for my father last weekend, but for some reason he didn't come. Hence, Dad figured he must still be on his skiing trip.

Being that this was scenerio was so deviously devised, it makes me wonder about all these Facebook accounts where you see pictures of people, their families, captions with names under the pictures, etc., this must be a virtual playground for scammers to really "personalize" their hoaxes to an incredible degree.

It just infuriates me no end to think my widowed father, living on a meager pension, was taken for that amount of money. Now, I'm really worried that he's on a "suckers list", and they'll have him on speed dial.
Once they go to the well, and come back with a full bucket, he will always be a target. Crying or Very sad

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 3:33 am

I am so sorry to hear about your father.

Unfortunately, you are absolutely right on both counts--facebook and other social networking sites are in fact a great way for scammers to get information, and your father will be labeled an easy mark after this event.

One thing you can do to try to reduce the risk of additional phone scams is to change his phone number to one that is unlisted. A determined scammer will be able to get his unlisted number, but it will eliminate some who rely on sites like whitepages.com for information.

You can also try to reduce the risk of email scams (and this scam is commonly carried out by email too). If he has any publicly listed email addresses or commonly known ones, close those or at least open a new email address to be used solely for family and close friends, and make sure it is never used to sign up for anything! Make sure that his facebook page privacy is turned on (choose to make the page not searchable by google, limit information to friends only) and do the same for other pages in your family. In the end, he (and all of you) will still have to be very vigilant, but at least you are taking some precautions.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 6:48 pm

Thanks for the info, Dorothy. I'm trying to get most of what you suggested accomplished for him. But you know men.....especially my father - he now thinks he's totally immune to any future scams after being stung once.

I did talk him into getting a caller ID machine, so he can at least screen the incoming calls.

Thanks again. I really just wanted to vent. That vein on my forehead is getting smaller today. *grin*

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 15 Jun 2010 Posts: 8

Arcola, TX?

I live within 5 minutes, if so

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 21 Feb 2010 Posts: 1

I will have to reduce info on my social-networking pages, this is really helpful.

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 1:48 am

Social networks can be fun, but to me it's just like walking through the streets with my ID pinned on my back.
I wouldn't do it.

EDIT: grammer :-/