My heart goes out to the local businesses who were victims of the “Sports Media” scammers who tricked them into signing on as sponsors of Concord High School’s basketball team (Monitor front page, May 18). My fury is directed at the lowest of lowlifes who prey on the goodwill of others. My desire is to put these criminals out of business forever.
I, too, was recently the target of a scammer trying to convince me that a friend had remembered me in his will and trust.
I received an email from someone purporting to be my friend’s attorney. The subject of the email was “Notification of John Adams Smith Trust” (not his real name). For approximately one second I was taken in by the scammer, thinking that my dear friend, who I’d known my whole life, left me something in his will.
When the email informed me to keep the matter a secret from anyone one else, I knew it was a scam. I immediately called my friend’s family and they confirmed it was a scam.
Upon further research I discovered how the scammer got my personal email address.
When John died, I posted a tribute to him on the funeral home website. He was like a father to me. We had been neighbors my entire childhood. I’d known him for over 60 years. I could barely see through my tears as I wrote the tribute, so I was unaware that when the tribute posted on the tribute wall, my email address was visible for all the world to see.
The lowlife scammer apparently trolls the tribute walls to find email addresses and then pounces on the grieving family member or friend at their most vulnerable time.
I immediately called the funeral home and they were mortified to learn of the problem and deleted my email address. They promised to review all their tribute walls to make sure there were no other potential scammer victims.
I decided to lead the scammer into believing he’d hooked an unsuspecting victim.
We exchanged several emails, which consumed a lot of his time. He sent me a copy of the trust (which was drawn up in London), informed me that I was to receive over $300,000 (my friend died penniless) and sent me a claim form. The scammer kept trying to get me to give him my cellphone number and send a copy of my passport. He also informed me that there would be an “application fee” that was calculated based on the amount of the gift. I presume I would have had to pay that before receiving any payment, but we didn’t get that far.
I called the Consumer Protection Division of the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, which referred me to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crimes Division. I have filed a complaint but have heard nothing. I suspect because I did not lose any money in the transaction, my complaint will go to the bottom of the pile.
As it happens, my “stay at home” coronavirus reading habits have included the classics, and this week I’ve been enjoying The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Imagine my surprise when Huck and Jim fall into the company of two scam artists, the Duke and the King. When they posed as the English relatives of Peter Wilkes and convinced the town’s folk to fork over the bag of gold worth $6,000, I wanted to scream, “Don’t fall for it!.” But, eventually, thanks to Huck, those lowlifes got their just deserts and were tarred and feathered and paraded around the town for all to see. By and by, if ever I were to get my hands on my scammer, I would lobby for the practice of tarring and feathering to be resurrected.
In the words of the Consumer Protection Division, “never provide personal or financial information over the phone or over the internet to a person whom you are not acquainted or had face-to-face contact, to be especially wary of unsolicited calls or emails. It is extremely risky to authorize payments through credit/debit cards, bank accounts, wire transfers or other payment methods unless you are positive you know the person” no matter how enticing the scam.
This has been a public service message sponsored by me.
(Susannah Colt lives in Whitefield.)