A taxi driver saved an elderly woman from being scammed out of $25,000

[Demovictory9]

A California cab driver knew something sounded fishy when his elderly passenger said she needed a ride to the bank to withdraw $25,000.

Rajbir Singh picked up a 92-year-old woman in Roseville, California, two weeks ago. When he started chatting with her, Singh said she told him she was about to withdraw the money to settle a debt with the IRS.

He pleaded with the woman to reconsider, saying he thought this could be a scam. Singh even detoured to a police station to help convince his passenger not to withdraw her money.

"I am an honest guy, and these are old people. They need help," Singh, the owner of Roseville Cab, told CNN on Thursday. "It just made sense."

As Singh talked to the woman, she told him that someone had called her and asked for the money. When he asked if it was a family member, the woman grew silent.

Singh said the woman agreed to let him call the number to the person who was posing as an IRS employee.

"We called this number again and I asked the man, 'Do you know this lady?' He said no," Singh said. "I knew something was wrong."
When Singh pressed the man, saying the woman was 92 years old and she was nervous, the man hung up on him. After repeated calls back, Singh said the number blocked them.

Despite that, Singh said the woman still didn't believe him, so he came up with another idea.

"Raj pleaded with the woman to reconsider so they agreed to stop by the Roseville Police Station to ask an officer," the police department said in a post on Facebook.

Singh spoke with an officer in the station, who then spoke with the woman, police said.
The conversation with the officer worked, and the woman believed she was being scammed.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/16/us/taxi-driver-prevents-scam-trnd/index.html

[Vogon_Glory]

1. Mister Singh is the sort of immigrant I want

in MY America, not some sleazy tax-dodging child-molesting billionaire scam-artist seeking to buy a green card.

[sandensea]

6. That second part just described most of Cheeto's social circle.

And of course, Cheeto himself.

[Vogon_Glory]

13. Oh, my, what a coincidence!

(wink, wink) (nudge, nudge).

[calimary]

14. Now THERE'S an individual worthy of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Which hopefully could come from a legitimate president maybe a year from now.

[Oldem]

23. Yes!

The idea that only those descended from white Europeans is ludicrous on its face. There are good people from every sector of humanity. God bless Mr. Singh!

[CaptYossarian]

27. Many of my doctors are from India and I trust them with my life.

[pazzyanne]

46. As do I!

I have two specialists that keep me alive. Both are immigrants and very well qualified.

[Brother Buzz]

25. What leads you to think Raj is an immigrant?

The most concentrated Sikh community in the United States has traditionally resided in Northern California; they've established a substantial presence in the area for decades.

If I was to hazard a guess, judging from his stature, I would suggest Raj Singh is at best a second generation American, living the American dream as the proud owner of the premier cab company in Roseville, Ca.

[soldierant]

43. Should have read down before I posted.

Thank you. Your response is much more complete than mine.

[soldierant]

42. He is certainly the kind of person I want to be here.

But what makes you sure he is an immigrant? There are many second or more generation Sikhs here.

[virgogal]

52. I saw nothing saying he was an immigrant.

[abqtommy]

2. There's balance in the world since tRUMP and his sucko-phants are the kind of emigrants I want.!

[Nature Man]

3. Thank the universe for this good man

at 92, she might have outlived anyone.

Kinda scary that there wasn't anyone around to give her this input before she set foot out the door, let alone in a cab.

[backtoblue]

4. K&R

[CatMor]

5. What a good man ....

we need more like him in our country.

[smirkymonkey]

39. +1000

I'm glad he was there to look out for her, because apparently nobody else was. He deserves a medal.

[CatMor]

40. Yes, he should have the medal given to low life Limbaugh ..

he was kind enough to engage a elderly woman in conversation that led to the discovery. Many times the elderly are ignored as if they are invisible.

[redstatebluegirl]

7. What an amazing man.

Lets see Singh, could he be one of those nasty immigrants the Felon in Chief is trying to keep out of our country?

[at140]

28. Singh is probably 2nd generation born citizen.

I lived for a year in that area, and it is full of Indian communities established long ago mainly as farmers.

[Wounded Bear]

8. Nice feel good story to wake up to...

[mountain grammy]

9. Big K&R

For this excellent story. Thank you 😊

[AllaN01Bear]

10. i just read this to a rumpster friend of mine and she asked me to save and i am

bookmarking later for future reference . this IS MY AMERICA , not what the THING has created . rah. i wanted to read it to her and she was glad i did. addendum to this post . this rumpster friend of mine is being harrassed by these scamers constantly. all she can do is hang up or unplugs the phone .

[bucolic_frolic]

11. We must all be taxi drivers

to convince Americans they are about to be scammed out of their country.

Singh it!

[superpatriotman]

18. The Singh kind...

not the Travis Bickle kind!

[lpbk2713]

12. I wonder how many victims this works on.

And then they say nothing because they are ashamed to admit they were duped.
An old person with no immediate family or close friends would be a prime target.

[yaesu]

16. Most of the cases are unreported as the victims either didn't know they were grifted or were too

embarrassed to report it. This kind of thing escalates when you live in a lawless fascist country like the US. The AG is too busy protecting his dictator & using all the JD resources to do it.

[xmas74]

17. I scam the scammers.

I keep them going, sometimes for days. My thought is if I'm wasting their time it's less time they have to find a victim.

[Demovictory9]

31. i get the soc sec call about once a week. sometimes i speak to them..tell them to stop scamming

[exboyfil]

33. Happened to the wife of a Republican politician

In Utah recently. She is fairly young. Macal Anderson. Husband is now working on legislation.

[IronLionZion]

15. The Good Stuff is a great weekly newsletter to subscribe to

https://www.cnn.com/specials/us/the-good-stuff

Great way to see that there is good in the world even though deplorables want to block people like Rajbir Singh from becoming Americans.

Washington Post has the Optimist which is a similar theme of good news stories delivered weekly to renew one's faith in humanity.

Other news organizations probably have similar offerings. Some TV channels will air good news in the morning and save doom and gloom for the evening.

I encourage DUers to subscribe to keep their sanity in this world. CNN is free, but I pay for WaPo because it's my local paper and I want to see more of this.

[lunasun]

19. Good story Glad he persisted

[FakeNoose]

20. Last line of the story will warm your heart

Singh took his passenger home, her bank account saved. A week after the potential scam was thwarted, Singh said he got a call asking him to come back to the station.

Officers gave Singh a $50 gift card to thank him for what he did.

[Demovictory9]

32. wonderful

[JohnnyRingo]

21. Hope she tipped him.

[NJCher]

22. I think that lady

had an angel looking out for her.

I love how Singh was so persistant.

[Blue Owl]

24. Was probably a tRump-voting MAGAT perpetrating the scam

Good on that cab driver!

[CaptYossarian]

30. My 3 IRS callers had Hispanic accents. (And Irish names.)

They may not be here anymore.

[krissey]

26. Wow, good for him Keep our eye out for the old people. This is a new tech world

that is lost on a lot of us old people. We are more trusting too.

[rickford66]

29. Twice I withdrew large sums of money to send overseas.

The bank employee asked a lot of questions about why I was sending the money. Did I know the recipient. Could I supply the recipients name and address besides the bank account etc. The people she had to call to transfer the money made a number of checks also. I wonder if every bank does this or have I been lucky. Transferring the money obviously set off an alarm. If I just withdrew the cash and mailed it I guess a scam wouldn't be caught. Hats off to the taxi driver.

[RandiFan1290]

34. Uber driver saves passenger from IRS scam

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

36. Thanks for posting this.

The uber driver does not come across as being negative about people from India.

It's astonishing to me that anyone could possibly fall for this scam. I know that one way they get money from people is to tell them to buy gift cards and then read the numbers on the card to them. Why anyone would think that the IRS would take cash or bitcoin or gift cards passes my understanding.

I have occasionally gotten the IRS scam call. I just tell them to go fuck themselves.

I more often get the call claiming to be from Microsoft, and then when I challenge them on that they immediately deny that's what they said.

[Sgent]

55. People get unreasonablely

fearful of the IRS / government. When I was doing tax preparation, I had a regular client call me, upset with me, that I had let them get behind on their tax payments. She was in the process of being duped by a scammer.

She was a middle aged, well educated, professional person who just had no money sense, and it wasn't until I emphasized the fact that they wanted her to pay in iTunes gift cards that she finally understood that it was a scam.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

56. People can be incredibly stupid, can't they?

I suppose this is one of the outcomes of a crappy education system, that doesn't teach people how to think through things.

[Pacifist Patriot]

35. That is awesome!

[Grins]

37. Same. Sitting my Dr.'s waiting room

Woman in room suddenly says she has to leave the WR to go make a call because Social Security called and said her account was frozen. I stopped her. Said it was a scam. Said SS will NEVER call, only write.

Guy across the room: “And neither will the IRS!”

Also true.

The thing...I don’t think this woman was even age 70. She looked like any person you might and have met every day.

[40RatRod]

38. I was able to tie up one of the "you computer has a problem" scams for about 20 minutes.

Told him I didn't know much about computers and thanked him for calling, kept asking him question while he wanted me to start my computer. Delayed him for some time waiting for it to warm up because it is slow. Then forgot my password and told him I remember where it is and went to get it out of my safe and left for several more minutes then told him my screen was blank, then asked if what he was doing would help my tablet. He finally got tired and hung up. It's fun to mess with them

[dflprincess]

47. I take an almost fiendish delight in messing with them.

I got the IRS call last year. I strung him along for a while, then asked if he had my last tax return in front of him

"Oh yes." was the reply.

"Then you can see who my employer is and what I do for a living."

"Yes."

"Then you can see I'm an attorney with the IRS." (a lie, I didn't feel one bit bad about telling.)

BANG! went his receiver. I haven't gotten that call again.

[40RatRod]

50. I plan to use that one.

Thanks, or maybe I will start answering fraud calls by saying "FBI. How may I direct your call"

[dflprincess]

53. Oh, I may have to try that "FBI" line.

Have you ever gotten the grandparent call? I have & I have no grandchildren. With that one I just said "I told you the next time you got into trouble not to call me. You made your mess, get yourself out of it." And I hung up before I heard the response to that.

[homegirl]

41. When these IRS scammers called me

I had a great time--yelling OMG-there's a man at the door-he has a gun, he's banging on the door (accompanied by my banging on nearby wall) more screams, more OMG's the police are here.

Too sad-they hung up.

Next day I called back and did a repeat performance.

Third day I called and the line was out of service.

They haven't called again.

Too bad-it was great fun!

[Demovictory9]

45. lol

[40RatRod]

51. Getting a lot of good ideas here!

[Iggo]

44. Two weeks ago, my Uber driver told me he did the exact same thing.

[wnylib]

48. I got one of those SS calls and

couldn't understand why. Did not speak to anyone because I do not answer if I don't recognize the number. They left a message. So I called SS and they said it was a scam. Got several more messages from them before they stopped calling.

The message would have been scary for a more trusting person. It said "We have been trying to reach you regarding a discrepancy in your account. If we do not hear from you, we will consider it intentional fraud and will proceed accordingly."

A couple weeks later I received a letter from SS informing me that a scam operation is calling people in their name and not to give out any info and definitely not any money. Got another SS warning in my online SS account.

Kinda wish now that I had answered the call and played around with them.

[McKim]

49. Got a Call from My "Grandson"

My caller called me “Grandma” and I said: “Johnny, is that YOU?”. He told a sob story about being stuck in Mexico with no money. I agreed to help him and spent a long time finding my purse, then my wallet and then my credit card and then had trouble reading the number, had to get my magniyer...I pretended to be very addlebrained and elderly. At the end I told him off!!! He never called again! And he used to call regularly. I highly recommend this! But anyone can be fooled. My elderly neighbors both graduates of an Ivy League School believed the IRS was calling them.

[Ilsa]

54. A friend of mine was just scammed out of

$2500. What bothers me is that if she was ten years younger, I think she would have known better. She has a masters degree in healthcare administration. She's not an unintelligent person.

[PatrickforO]

57. Scammers are such dirt-bags. And with the new robocall technology

these calls come from all over the world. The 'no call' list is a joke.

[Perseus]

58. Does anyone know if the scammer was caught?

It is important for the police to get these people, so many get away with the scams, and it needs to stop.

[Grammy23]

59. My mother-in-law was saved from a scammer's clutches by

an astute clerk at her local pharmacy. She went in and attempted to buy one of those $400 “green money cards” they are often instructed to buy. Then they are to call the scammer back with the card number. The clerk recognized right away that it was the money card scam. She told my MIL not to do it because it was a scam, so she was able to prevent her from being taken.

My MIL will be 89 in April. She was a licensed practical nurse. She is a simple woman in many ways but years ago would never have fallen for those scams. For about the last 10 years or more she has been scammed by con artists for mostly small amounts of money ....$25-35. We have tried and tried to tell her not to answer calls from numbers she does not recognize. Sometimes she listens to us, sometimes not. She also is victimized by tons of “charities“ who send her stuff in the mail. If they mention Sick children or veterans she will almost always try to send them some money. We have even looked up some of these so called charities to show her they are not doing what they say they are doing with the money. She agrees they are scammers but then another one comes along and she forgets about the last time. Sigh..

I pray that I never get to the point of being scammed like my MIL has been. It is sad and despicable to take advantage of someone who is old and does not show good judgment any more.