Grandparents beware. This almost happened to my dad.
Grandparent scams typically work something like this: The victim gets a call from someone posing as his or her grandchild. This person explains, in a frantic-sounding voice, that he or she is in trouble: There’s been an accident, or an arrest, or a robbery.
To up the drama and urgency, the caller might claim to be hospitalized or stuck in a foreign country; to make the impersonation more convincing, he or she will throw in a few family particulars, gleaned from the actual grandchild’s social media activity.
The impostor offers just enough detail about where and how the emergency happened to make it seem plausible and perhaps turns the phone over to another scammer who pretends to be a doctor, police officer or lawyer and backs up the story. The “grandchild” implores the target to wire money immediately, adding an anxious plea: “Don’t tell Mom and Dad!”
Fraudsters have also been known to ply this trick by email, text message and social media. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the FBI have warned of an uptick in grandparent scams as crooks play on emotional vulnerability and heightened fear about loved ones falling ill.
Grandparent scams and related cons are common — from 2015 through the first quarter of 2020, the FTC logged more than 91,000 reports of crooks posing as a relative or friend of the victim. And they can be lucrative: Eight people charged in a July 2021 federal indictment allegedly ran a nationwide scam network that used this ruse to steal some $2 million from more than 70 older Americans over an 11-month period in 2019 and 2020.
https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2019/grandparent.html
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It's not easy, but doable. Perhaps we smart folks can help set up filters (like allowing calls from contacts-only) or helping people identify who's trusted. I never pick up a number I don't recognize with caller-id.
Most don't leave a message, and that's a pretty decent filter, because it doubles the time a scammer would have to take, and time is precious when you work the odds that they do.
Perhaps something as simple as "I'll call you back" (from my contacts list) would work.
Same goes for other media.
Asking a simple question might help.
I read that in WW!! soldiers would ask suspicious people "Who is the President of the United States?"
And you know, in the age of MAGAt traitors. that might still work like a charm!!! Most of them get it wrong.
(rim shot)
