The phone rang a few days ago, and when I answered, a plaintive voice on the other end implored, “Grandpa, I need to talk to you.”
My response was instant: “Do you want me to report this call to the police now, or would like to finish your spiel first? Let me guess, you’ve been in a car crash, you’ve been arrested, and you need me to send you bail money.”
“Is that pretty much the story?” I asked my “grandson,” a college student.
Long silence. Then, instead of the expected hang-up, a dispirited response: “Yes, that’s close. You effing Rhode Islanders are hard to scam.”
Well, maybe. But this is the most obvious hustle of oldsters in the book.
In fact, it’s so common these days that the FBI even has a name for it – the “Grandparent Scam.”
My caller, an articulate, polite, 30-ish sounding man, seemed almost relieved at being outed. And he ached to talk.
“I used to make $10,000 a week at this,” he said, but today, “There’s so much awareness.” Rhode Island, especially, seems to have a high percentage of skeptics who harbor “a lot of attitude,” he said.
He was calling from Canada, from which he has been preying on the elderly for the past decade.
Doesn’t he feel guilty, wringing money from octogenarians like me?
Yes, there’s a guilt factor, he said, but he got into this when he felt pushed into a financial corner. He quickly came to enjoy payoffs that bought him fancy clothes and a high-rent apartment.
Now he’s a big spender, newly broken up with his girlfriend, blowing most of his money on luxury items, and amassing “no hard-core savings.”
“It’s a crazy life,” he said, filled with stress and risk.
But here’s how lucrative it can be:
Last February, a New York man was sentenced by a federal court in Providence to serve 30 months for scamming elderly people around the country, including Rhode Island. As for how much he squeezed out of his victims, the court ordered him to pay restitution of more than $860,000.
Last March, a 77-year-old Exeter woman was conned out of $33,000 in a similar grandparent scheme.
The FBI offers some obvious advice to seniors: Don’t answer telephone calls from numbers you don’t recognize, but if you do receive cash requests from a family member, hang up and verify the story directly with the relative.
I took perverse pleasure in explaining to my therapy-hungry scammer why I instantly knew his call was a fake: None of my four grandchildren would ever call me “Grandpa.” In accordance with our family’s Jewish heritage, they know me only as “Zayde” – the Yiddish word for grandfather.
Still, there we were – scammer and potential victim – having an outlandishly cordial heart-to-heart in which he laid out his anxieties.
And here is the bizarre conclusion: When he said, “Have a good day,” I reflexively replied, “You, too.”
Here’s hoping that as he plies his shameful trade, he won’t take me literally.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net) a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
