The Granddaddy of Grifts
In this week’s New York Times Magazine, journalist Nitsuh Abebe writes, “There are frauds and swindles and other crimes, and then there’s the ‘grift’ – a racket that, criminal or not, seems built to empty someone’s pocket. Grifters are the ones with flair and ambition, who seem to delight in the con itself – the cleverness of the scheme, the smooth ease with which the marks are gulled.”
Last summer I wrote about the pernicious criminal element infiltrating hapless seniors throughout South Florida. My parents were victims of “the roofer scam,” a team of reprobates who go door to door selling unneeded and unfulfilled roof repairs to elders too frail to get on their roofs and verify the problem.
So, imagine my surprise when, visiting my parents just last week, a band of grifters with “flair and ambition” struck again. But this time the mark was me.
We were at breakfast, the phone rang, and my mother answered. “Hello. Lauren? What’s the matter?” It was my niece calling, and I could tell something was wrong. “Oh, that’s terrible. Was anyone hurt? Wait, talk to Uncle Billy.” Lauren’s voice was trembling.
“Uncle Billy, I’m in a courthouse in Manhattan. I got a DUI.”
“Was this really possible?” I thought to myself. My mind did a quick calculation. Lauren is only 16 and lives in Baltimore. But she’s a clever, confident and social young lady who drove alone to New Jersey the first week she got her license. “How did it happen, Lauren?”
“I don’t know but I did something stupid,” she whimpered. “I was at a wedding and on my way home in a rental car and I hit a telephone pole. But I’m fine. They aren’t going to charge me because I was only .02 over the limit. But they won’t let me go unless I post $8,000. It’s fully refundable. Can you please help me?”
“Did you tell your parents?”
“I’m afraid to. I want to wait until I get home.”
Of course I wanted to help. I imagined her shame and terror at being detained all night in a New York courthouse. She told me they took her phone and I could not reach her, but to call her attorney. He had a New York accent, and sounded relatable.
“Hi this is David Goldman. Yeah. Lauren’s a nice girl. Scared to death. Got off easy though. No charges. No criminal record. It will take $8,000 to get her out. Fully refundable. Problem is you’re out of state, and a wire will take several days. The other way is to do it is with cash. I can send a Brinks guy over, and as soon as he gets it, they release funds to me up here, and we can get her out of there. Hey, we’ve all been in trouble before. My daughters have. Even me.”
Such a good guy! I didn’t even think to dissect all the inconsistencies in his story. A family member was in trouble. I was in fight/flight, and immediately went to the bank and began withdrawing cash when my phone rang. It was my daughter. “Don’t do it. It’s a scam,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“I texted Lauren to see if she was OK, and she didn’t know what I was talking about. She’s in school in Baltimore.”
I didn’t believe it at first. Maybe Lauren was hiding it from her cousin, too. But then I began to add it all up. What would my 16-year-old niece be doing at a New York wedding on a Thursday night in December by herself? How could she be driving a rental car? Since when did Brinks armored cars have a consumer division? Why was a New York lawyer calling me from a British Columbia area code? And how could I have not realized it wasn’t Lauren’s voice?
When I returned home, we called the police. The officer shrugged and told us this was just another of the thousand scams perpetrated daily on unsuspecting seniors.
“But why don’t we set up a sting and catch them in the act?” I asked.
“Can’t do it,” said the cop. “That would be entrapment. Besides, the mule probably doesn’t know who sent him. It’s that sophisticated.”
“Yes, but how did they know who my mother’s granddaughter was?”
“Chances are they got hold of the community phone book. Maybe pulled it from the trash. Then they go on social media and match it to family members (as if Facebook didn’t suck enough already). Then they work up a tantalizing story that preys on every emotion to get you to act irrationally.”
And act irrationally I did. As I replayed it over and over in my head, I actually came to appreciate the elegance of the scam. I imagined “David Goldman” sitting with his dame in some boiler room in Pompano Beach, dialing for dollars, working the scripts, high fiving each other at the genius of the scam. It’s a numbers game. South Florida is a target-rich environment. And on that day, I was the mark, easily gulled.
And if that wasn’t bruising enough to my ego, my brother then heaped nothing but scorn on me.
“How could you be so stupid?” he barked. And that, dear readers, was the thanks I got for being willing to risk $8,000, no questions asked, to bail out his drunk, underage daughter!
