Phone scams
 

As I know that a lot of our members are retirees and elders, I would like to post this as a sort of public service message and I do care about the forum members well being.
I went by my fathers at lunch today and when I arrived he was on the phone. When he got off the phone he said that my nephew, who is a senior in high school, had called from North Carolina saying he was in jail for DUI. He was then contacted by his public defender saying that they had to be back in court in 30 minutes and the DA was willing to drop the fine from $2500 to $1480 if he had cash when they returned to court. Asked my father to send the money through Moneygram and gave him a receivers name and said send it to the Dominican Republic (flag!).
The first thing I asked was if he had talked to my brother. He said my nephew didn't want them to know and that he said he would pay him back as soon as he got back to Texas. My nephew recently won an award for architecture and I thought maybe they sent him on a trip. Checked his Facebook page and found nothing about it. So I broke down and called my brothers girlfriend to find out that my nephew was in school right here in Texas.
I made it to the Moneygram place just as my dad was starting to enter numbers into the kiosk and stopped him. It was just luck that I came by today.
There are a lot of these scams going on targeting seniors. If you get a call similar to this, or if it just doesn't sound right, do some investigation before sending any money anywhere. And if you are a forum member that has elderly parents, please share this info with them before they get a call like this.

Jon, talk about being in the right place at the right time....

Yes it was very lucky. My dad has leukemia and has been taking this medication called Gleevec that has his mind really messed up. He's getting to the point that I may have to move there to help him out with a lot of things that he's having trouble with. When things like today happen it just makes me realize more that I probably need to put my life on hold for a bit to make sure he's OK. He's sure done a lot for me over the years so it's the least I can do.

misfit, you are lucky that you caught it just in time
It seems like everywhere you turn these days, someone is trying to scam you or a member of your family out of money, it should be the norm just not to trust anyone you don't know that calls on the phone no matter who it is, they may sound very official and give you some legit organization name, just hang up and google the phone number they called from.
the ones I like are the email that claim some wealthy person who made their money from oil investment, died overseas, but they left 20 million dollars so they checked my name and I happen to be the only close living relative to them (how come I have never heard of them) but the money is in the bank and whoever is sending the email will get me the millions (out of the goodness of their heart) if I wire transfer $2000 to them.
then the ones that get someone in your contact list (legit) who is stuck in some country in africa because they lost their passport and ticket and they need $1500 to come back and pay it as soon as they get here.
Buying from craigs list is not safe either, if you are buying anything on craigs list, agree with them that you will meet them at some police station's parking lot
who are these people ???

There are some real "slicks" out there. We refuse to give money to anyone over the phone even if it claims to be a charity. We tell them if they want to mail us something we will consider it. You don't know who is on the other end of the line and what they are up to.

Phone scams
 

A couple of years ago, I heard of the same thing- sending money to get a grandchild out of jail

Yup, that one's been around for a couple years.

We've gotten two phone calls supposedly from a Microsoft site telling us they are monitoring our PC and that we've got malware on board that is making all our private information public. They then offer to remove it if I will allow them to connect remotely. They start to describe what I have to do and I tell them I can't follow their instructions because my operating system is Linux. That's only true on one of my PCs, but this stops them cold and they hang up.

I really don't know how anyone can protect some of our less savvy neighbors and relatives though. I wish there were some kind of "reverse" attack we could engineer through the phone lines when these low-lifers try their scams.

- Jack

I told them I have an Apple computer. I lied!

Phone scams
 

I have caller ID. It is the greatest invention since sliced bread. If I am home and am unsure of the call you had better start talking. If it is important I will pick it up. I have no problem hanging up on an annoying call. I had to teach my elderly mother to hang up on them. She won't have an answering machine and doesn't have caller ID.

Yep, I've had two calls from wherever telling me they want to talk about my windows, but I always hang up. I've been wishing they would call back so I could explain that my wife and I wash the windows throughout the house, inside and out in early summer.:D

That's a good one! We will have to remember that the next time we get a call.:D