Warn Your Grandparents
A few weeks ago, a man pretending to be me called my grandmother and, claiming that I was involved in a car accident in Canada. He then gave the phone to a “lawyer”, who asked her to wire money to help me. She’s fine, but she was conned out of a not-insignificant amount of money. She’s a sharp woman, and not easily fooled, but they pushed all the right buttons and preyed on her worry for me. (The con artist claimed to have called her first because she was “the most likely to be at home” — actually true, since my parents commute frequently between cities and aren’t always easy to reach — and that she shouldn’t tell my parents because “I” wanted to be one to tell her. It wasn’t until one of my cousins saw a Facebook post of mine that she realized it was a con — unfortunately, by that time it was too late.
A number of people have asked how the con artists knew about our relationship. My assumption is that they just stole or otherwise procured a database that happened to have her listed as an emergency contact, but of course there’s a thousand other sources that might have worked as well, including all the information about me that’s publicly available on the internet. My grandmother remarked a number of times that “He sounded just like you”, and while the low fidelity of a phone call, the degradation of an elderly persons’ hearing, and the fact that the con artist was “crying” certainly gave him a wide margin of error, there are enough samples of my voice on the Internet that they could have done a little homework and mimicked my voice — and anyone who’s good enough at social engineering to pull off this con certainly has a bit of acting ability. It’s an interesting and unsettling side effect of Internet self-publishing — the more information about you that exists and is accessible, the easier you are to impersonate.
At any rate — warn your grandparents about this scam. It’s apparently quite common — here’s a Canadian news piece about the scam, and some resources at the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre — and it specifically preys on the elderly, exploiting their concern and love for their grandchildren. While you’re at it, tell them you love them — because if you really were stuck in jail in another country, they’d do anything they could to help you.
