If you have never been the victim of a scam, consider yourself lucky.
New scams are always popping p and they are getting harder to identify. Around the holidays, scammers are usually the most active. They call people pretending to be different credit bureaus, banks, and government agencies to attempt to gain your trust and convince you to give them your personal information.
A lot of people have caught onto these scams, but unfortunately, some people still fall for them. The elderly are particularly vulnerable to scams like this because they simply don’t realize they are being tricked. Some elderly people have willingly given thousands of dollars to scammers out of fear or concern.
One of the most common scams is when someone says they are the IRS and they threaten to sue the person on the other line for unpaid taxes.
Getting a call like this is, of course, scary and stressful, and if a person isn’t thinking that it may be a scam, they may be willing to give up their personal information and money in order to avoid the lawsuit. This is what the scammers depend on.
They often use stern, serious voices; they may make threats to the person they are talking to or their family and friends. They even use official terms to sound professional and to trick the person into believing they are really calling from the IRS. They count on people acting out of fear and sending them money without thinking it through.
In an attempt to show people what a scam calls sounds and to help them handle them, the Ames Police Department recorded a call between an officer and a scammer.
What they mean to be educational turned out to be hilarious, thanks to Officer Snyder.
During the call, the scammer can be heard accusing Snyder of owing the IRS money and intentionally trying to avoid paying it. He pretends to be surprised that he owes money and apologizes for it. They even tell him that there is a warrant for his arrest because of the delinquent taxes. He acts concerned and asks what he should do.
They give him the option of paying over $5,000 over the phone or go to court and risk a fine of $75,000 and several months in jail. He tells them that he would rather just turn himself in to the authorities. He even put handcuffs on himself. The scammers aren’t amused by his comments and become agitated. They tell him they are refusing to help him because he is a criminal.
When he tells them that he has turned himself in and wants to know who the police should call about the matter, they get mad and ask him not to call them back.
He seems to have won the phone call argument. Not that it will matter, because they will soon call the next person on their list hoping for better luck.
Officer Snyder and the police department hope that their hilarious phone call will help make people aware of how pushy the scammers can be and the kinds of things they will say to get them to send their money over. Most of them are foreign and located in other countries, which makes it hard to the police or government to do anything about the scams.
One of the only things they can do it warn people of the scams and tell them how to avoid them. They encourage anyone who receives a phone call requesting money to call the police in their area to find out if it is indeed a scam.
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