by Rick Ackerman, Rick’s Picks
Sometimes I wonder if America is becoming a nation of scammers. Not a week goes by that I don’t hear from at least one or two of them. That’s no exaggeration. The phone number above popped up on my caller ID Wednesday afternoon when I was trying to unwind after a busy day.
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A woman with a heavy Hispanic accent told me that my Social Security number and a phone number associated with it were found, along with a quantity of cocaine, in a car seized in a raid near the Texas border. She asked me to verify the last four digits of my Social, but I impolitely declined. Instead, I told her that if she ever bothered me again, I’d find out where she works, where her kids go to school, who her relatives are, and then I’d wreck their lives.
It’s possible to find out all of this with a little diligence and some training. I know this because I worked for a private eye in San Francisco for a few years who taught me how to find out nearly anything, especially about the people we meet. I’d worked as a newspaper reporter before then, and so I was already pretty good at it.
But much as I’d enjoy tracking down this woman, her co-workers and her sleaze-bag employer to teach them that crime doesn’t pay, who’s got time for that sort of thing? And anyway, crime actually does pay. This is unfortunate but true now that local police departments have given up on petty crime. The result is that America is breeding a nation of scammers who go about their business with impunity, right out in the open.
The Rental Con
One such scam was advertising a $1,000 rental in Lauderdale Lakes Florida a few days ago that interested me. I am helping an elderly friend who was stricken with cancer find an apartment because the one he and his wife have lived in for seven years has been sold out from under them. The ad was on Craig’s List, the scammer’s newspaper of record, and it sounded too good to be true: three bedrooms, two baths, a nice yard and utilities, all for a thousand bucks a month?
Suspicious but desperate to find a rental, I replied anyway, telling a “Mr. Atkinson Harrindell” of my interest in his house. The response I received from him was right out of Scamming for Dummies – a ridiculous story about how he’s taking a job in California, and could I maybe pay a full year’s rent in advance. There was no realtor involved, and therefore no way for me to have a look inside the house. He suggested that I drive by it, and that if I liked it, to get a $12,000 certified check to him, even though he wouldn’t be available to receive it in person.
Realize that this is South Florida, where a lot of senile old coots actually fall for stuff like this. Determined to set up this shithead for a pinch, I called the local police department to see if they might be willing to help. It took me five or six calls to reach a sympathetic detective, but his superior evidently ruled out the sting I had in mind.
When was the last time you read a news story about one of these Craig’s List rental scammers getting arrested, never mind convicted? It’s easy to understand why this will never happen: They are more numerous as fleas, and just as hard to catch. Merely pursuing the con-artists I’ve run across in the last couple of months would be a full-time job.
One scum-bag offered to buy a painting I’d listed on eBay for $14,000. I’d been trying unsuccessfully to sell it for five years, and along comes this guy who wants to buy it without even haggling over the price. Suspiciously, he never said a word about the painting itself or why he liked it. I told him I’d pay to have it shipped from Colorado to… wherever – he never did say where he lived – but he insisted on sending me a check for $14,000 plus an extra $3000 that I supposedly would hand over to his shipper.
The check he sent me, drawn on “Apple Ltd.,” arrived in a priority mail envelope, but my banker at Wells Fargo just laughed when he saw it. By that time I had enough information to find out the scammer’s real name and where he lived, so I sent him a letter via regular mail taking him to task for concocting such an idiotic scam. I also offered to critique his methods for $2,000, but I never heard back from him.
Bring Back the Pillory?
Did I mention that three of the dozen or so marketing directors I’ve hired over the years were scammers? One of them, “Eddie D_____,” operated a separate business under a different name. A word of advice: NEVER do business with someone who uses more than one surname. Another one of my “marketing directors,” practically wrecked Rick’s Picks with a low-rent promotion designed to recoup the $60,000 he’d billed me up-front. He knew as much about marketing as the pizza-delivery guy.
I’ve begun to wonder whether there are more crooks out there than honest businessmen. Steer clear of Craig’s List if you’re as cynical about this as I am. And don’t depend on the police or your local sheriff’s department to do anything about it if you get ripped off – unless it’s for $50,000 or more. The best we can do otherwise is hope that there’s a special place in hell for those who take all of us for suckers. There was a time in America when they would have been pilloried in the public square. Ahhh, for the good old days!
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