Are you on the ‘sucker list’?

Did you know that there’s a list of ‘suckers’ who fall for scams? The list has your phone number, email and credit card details. This list is sold to all other scammers out in the whole wide world who want to make a quick buck by making you a sucker. I’ve been a victim.

Years ago, while in the US, I was told via e-mail that I had won a million-dollar lottery. To get hold of the money, I was asked to contact Mr So & So at the earliest in Spain. When I called that number the man on the other side of the line questioned me about confidential information.

Like a fool I laid myself bare. My ID was now in this stranger’s hands. When I put down the phone, I felt a shiver of fear run through. He had my phone number, mailing address, passport details, Social Security number and my bank account details.

‘The money should be in your bank in a week’s time,’ said the smoothie when he called a couple of days later. He must have checked out the bank information I had given him. ‘But you need to transmit $7,000 to our bank before we can wire you your winnings. You have to pay this sum as tax. If we don’t receive your money in 48 hours, I’m afraid you’ll lose all the money.’

Okay! Enough. I’ve been fooled, I scolded myself. Greed got the better of me. I swore never to fall for a ‘goldbrick’ again. Meanwhile, my ‘contact’ pestered me with phone calls and emails. He refused to give up. I ignored him. But I had hallucinations of the thug turning up at my front door in the dark of the night. Thank heavens for 911. I could dial the number for police knowing my call would get a cop to help in five minutes. That’s one of the many advantages of living in America, I soothed my frayed nerves.

In months to come I got myself a new life, as the Americans say. This morning I deleted two emails telling me I had won another lottery. I continue to get notices regularly. I simply hit the delete and move on. But I suspect my personal information is still out in the cyber world because I form the core of the ‘sucker list’ compiled a decade ago. Another family member continues to be short-changed. Yesterday he was on the phone with someone for 90 minutes who was selling him a package on work from home. I was horrified to hear him rattle off his credit card details and other relevant information.

‘It’s a one-time payment,’ he reassured me when I told him he had been made a sucker. ‘That’s what they told you when they were selling you the coffee and that crappy piece of jewellery,’ I reminded him. ‘Yet your credit card was being debited for $50 on a monthly basis until you got wise’ I said. Our kitchen is swamped with coffee beans. A package arrives every month. I’m expecting the ‘jewels’, those plastic baubles to show up any day.

Recently the Wall Street Journal carried a piece on fraudsters who scam 30.2 million Americans each year, out of which three million fall prey to bogus lottery schemes.

A 70-something relative of the writer wired all his retirement savings to a stranger, believing he was paying taxes on huge lottery winnings. This Ivy League-educated professional kept sending money because the scammers had effectively and efficiently won his trust. It was impossible to stop him. His children and stepchildren counseled him, cajoled him and took him to task. Experts, lawyers and his doctor were consulted.

Law-enforcement agencies, from the local police to state officials to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were called. ‘He agreed to give power of attorney to a son to help with financial matters. Yet he continued to send away money he couldn’t afford to lose, fully expecting to see a huge reward in a matter of days.’ The writer’s ‘cautionary tale’ describes how con artists diddle people in these tough economic times with Internet, telemarketing and direct-mail orders because people of all ages are especially in need of a financial victory.

’Foreign lottery and sweepstakes scams are particularly effective with the elderly, especially those who have lost some mental capacity. The unemployed are susceptible to work-at-home schemes that call for upfront payments, but produce no jobs, while confident, highly educated professionals in their prime years regularly fall prey to investment frauds.’

Some lottery crooks have ‘added a new weapon in their rip-off arsenal,’ says the writer. The victims are sent cheques — fake, of course — as advance payments on purported winnings to come. They are guided to deposit the cheque and then to wire the tax money to the person who has sent the cheque. The counterfeit cheque bounces some days later but it’s too late because the victim has already wired several thousand dollars in anticipation of receiving his millions!

The WSJ story is instructive. The writer’s relative got so desperate to send money to scammers that he attempted cashing out his life-insurance policy. He failed. So he sold his car instead and wired $4,000 to Costa Rica. Finally, the family got court orders restraining him from managing his finances. ‘The family went to lunch with him, then dismantled his cellphone and redirected his mail to another state. A few hours later, he demanded his phone back. He wanted to call some ‘friends’ who had some money waiting for him.’

As I end my column a ‘Hello Dear’ email peers out of my mailbox. It’s from Fluzzy Adams, 22. She writes that her father got killed in Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) West Africa. I’m told that before the death of Adam’s her father had a sum of US$4,500,000 kept in a bank in my name as the next of kin. It then asked to provide a bank account and personal details so that the money could be transferred after deduction of taxes which I’d have to pay up front to claim the huge sum.

This indeed is news for me! I really didn’t know that I was Fluzzy Adams’s ‘next of kin.’ Tomorrow I may end up being the daughter of the corrupt Nigerian dictator General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida who, upon his death, makes me the heir to his financial empire! Serves me right for being on the ‘sucker list’.