This week Oscar Manuel Castanos Garcia of the Dominican Republic was charged with masterminding a sophisticated call center operation in the Dominican Republic that would target elderly people in the United States through the grandparent scam.  Twelve other participants in the scam were also charged.  Working through a call center in the Dominican Republic, the scammers would call elderly people in the United States posing as their grandchild who had gotten arrested and needed bail money.  The scammers would first call posing as the grandchild and then a follow up call would be made by another scammer posing as the grandchild’s lawyer demanding money to pay for bail and legal expenses.  The scammers then sent Uber drivers to the homes of the elderly victims to pick up the cash.  None of the Uber driver were aware that they were being used for the scam, however, a suspicious Uber driver recognized it was a scam and reported it to the FBI which led to the arrests.  According to prosecutors, the scammer stole more than $5 million from 400 victims.

Here is a copy of the scripts used by the scammers.

I am sure by now all of you are familiar with the grandparent scam where a grandparent receives a telephone call from someone purporting to be their grandchild who has gotten into some trouble, most commonly a traffic accident, legal trouble or medical  problems in a far away place.  The caller pleads for the grandparent to send money immediately to help resolve the problem.  However the caller also begs the grandparent not to tell mom and dad.  One would think that no one would be gullible enough to fall for this scam, but don’t be so hard on the victims of this scam.  Scam artists have a knowledge of psychology of which Freud would have been envious and are able to use that knowledge to persuade their victims to send money right away. While this scam has been going on for approximately fifteen years, it continues to victimize people.

TIPS

Scammers often use the nicknames of the grandchildren when speaking to their intended victims.  Sometimes they get this information from social media while in other instances they get this information from reading obituaries which may contain the names of grandchildren so merely because the correct name is used in the call is no reason to believe the call.  Don’t respond immediately to such a call without calling the real grandchild on his or her cell phone or call the parents and confirm the whereabouts of the grandchild.  If a medical problem is the ruse used, you can call the real hospital.  If legal problems are the hook you can call the real police.  You can also test the caller with a question that could be answered only by the real grandchild, but make sure that it really is a question that  only the real grandchild could answer and not just anyone who might read the real grandchild’ s social media postings.  Prudent families can also come up with a code word to use in an emergency which a scammer will never know.

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