My 93 year old friend “Carl” received a tearful call from a woman claiming to be his housekeeper “Mary”, with whom he is close, saying she was injured and in jail and needed bail money. Carl was instructed to call a public defender named Matthew Dickson at a certain phone number and arrange transfer of cash bail. Of course the initial call was from a scammer, working in partnership with the fake public defender. It is unclear how the scammer knew that Carl had a housekeeper friend named Mary that he might be willing to bail out; my suspicion is that the woman just called and waited for Carl to say something like “Is this my housekeeper? Mary is that you?” Another possibility, I think less likely, is that the housekeeper was involved in the scam somehow, even if just as a lead generator who passed off Carl’s name and phone number to a specialist scammer, for a share of the proceeds.
Carl called Matthew Dickson and got his instructions. Carl went to his bank and attempted to withdraw the money. The bank teller was immediately suspicious. She warned Carl that this sounded like a scam. Carl was adamant that his money be given to him! He is a proud old man with definite ideas about how employees should respect his wishes to spend his money as he chooses. The teller stood firm and told Carl to call the Sheriff and ask if there was someone with his housekeeper’s name in custody. Carl called, and the Sheriff informed him that nobody by that name was in custody.
Carl then calls me, confused, and I tell him this is certainly a scam. I gather as much information from Carl as I can, and I call Matthew Dickson’s number myself. I suspect the scammers are running many of these scams at once and might not be completely organized. So in my call I pretend to be another befuddled older person named Stephen Walters calling about my wayward granddaughter Rebecca who was in jail. The male I speak with says I will get a call back:
Within a few minutes I get a call back from a fake public defender who identifies himself as “Dan Miller”. He gathers some information from me and tells me that my granddaughter was involved in a car accident with a pregnant woman. Rebecca was distracted by a text and is at fault, and foolishly admitted that. But, thankfully, the baby was not harmed. I’m told to go to my bank and withdraw $9,500 (my buddy Dan talked the judge down from $10,000) and that I should acquire a padded manilla envelope and three regular letter envelopes and await further instructions. I am told that if the bank asks why I am withdrawing so much money I should not tell them it is for bail, but instead to tell the bank that I am withdrawing the money for work on my home:
An hour later I get another call from Dan Miller. I tell him I have the money and I’m ready to proceed. He tells me how to pack the money and where to send it. I will be sending the money in the padded envelope to an address in Fairfield, Connecticut. This is that call (note there is a long silent period where he is researching mailing options):
I don’t call back for several hours. I then get a tearful call from my dear Rebecca for some motivation (excuse the echo–those prison phone systems are lousy). I explain that I spoke with the public defender but am having difficulty sending mail to that address:
Be strong, honey! This address looks to be a short term home rental. I call Dan back explaining that I am having trouble mailing the package. I am hoping that he gives me another address that might help identify him. The new address is near the first, in Darien, Connecticut (note call is in two parts):
He calls back one more time to see if I was successful this time, and I explain that I’m still have trouble mailing. He is maybe starting to suspect something is wrong:
And that’s the end of it. The second address seems to be a home listed for rent, just like the first. I bet the strategy the scammers had for getting the money was to have it delivered to an unoccupied house for rent. The scammers would stake out the house from some safe distance and have a Task Rabbit or some other unaffiliated person pick up the parcel while they watched. If the person getting the parcel was interrupted and questioned, the scammers give up there. Otherwise, they meet that person at another prearranged location and get the parcel of cash. Pretty safe.
The mother of a dear friend recently lost $25K to a similar scam. In that case, the delivery was to a box at a UPS store in southern California.
I called local law enforcement and described what happened to Carl and never heard anything back. What can they do?
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