DISQUS

Marcus Thomas · 7 months ago

Hey David,
I'm in the same boat with absurdness of these e-mails. Unfortunately though, about 3-4 years ago I had the privilege of working at a local credit union and we were almost monthly hit with these scams. I’d guesstimate that I've seen at least 8-10 customers (generally older) that came in and either attempted to verify checks and/or withdraw from their personal savings to receive payment. The common business saying of, “you have to spend money to make money” takes on a very cruel swing when you have elder woman withdrawing their life savings(many times the saving of deceased husbands) in hopes that by sending these grave diggers a couple of thousand in return they'd receive millions. One that sticks out in mind was a very smart (or so I thought) woman that came in regularly. She had an old saving booklet and she’d regularly only with draw the interest gain in her savings as her living funds. She came in one day with a letter from Australia stating she had won the Australian lottery. However she’d need to send $2000 via western union (only of course) in order to pay shipping/handling and additional fees to collect her 2 million dollar prize. I instantly knew it was a scam, however our policy required us to contact our security supervisor verify the fraudulent item and request to keep the letter for security purposes. After rather laughably verification I return to woman to share the news. Now many times they know and unfortunately many of the people would hope for a teller error that would score them easy cash. However surprisingly she was very upset. My first question was, “have you ever been to Australia? The woman answers no! Do you have family there? No! Well is there any way that you could have enter the Australia lottery (she was so upset I’d thought myself maybe she enter online)? But she answered, No! So I asked how you thought you could have won. She sadly said, “I’ve been praying to God for a miracle and I thought this was it”. My heart drop and initially my thoughts of “who are these idiots (for lack of a better word) who believe these scams; to disgust and anger towards the low-life who unfortunately prey on the underprivileged people and our hope! Well hopefully the government can try to cut-down on these scams however the responsibility lies with us to use common sense to navigate though the world(s) of scams. Regards Marcus Thomas