Semi-scammed again
It’s been three years since I was last scammed. An ice cream man, believe it or not, crouching in wait under the Washington Monument, just a hop, skip, and jump from the algae-infected reflecting pool in front of Honest Abe.
Imagine a con in Washington, D.C., even before the biggest con man of all returned. You can read the hoary story here.
Scammed Under the Washington Monument by an Ice Cream Man
And what I learned
Yesterday, it happened again, sort of, and serves as the foundation for this tale about personal independence, a response to Jerv Nai Matrap’s prompt.
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I’m soon to be 77, with the history of a mother who was determined to live out the winter of her life on her terms which meant, in her house, in control of paying bills, etc. Our father, also Paul, died of sinus cancer in 1993.
Mom was like a fort, impregnable, with a moat in front and the draw bridge up whenever any of us even tip toed close to taking any of these responsibilities away. She saw Trojan Horses everywhere.
One thing my two brothers and I worried about was mom’s vulnerabilty to phone fraudsters. So, sometime in her eighties — she would live to 95, all but the final two years, in her home — Pat, who lived five miles from her, and with mom’s reluctant permission, added his name to her bank account.
Which he would monitor on her computer every Saturday morning before they went for breakfast at Panera Bread.
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Did you know you can order a DIY castle online? According to the website, the first piece is the defensive perimeter. Amazon will deliver it on Tuesday.
Kidding aside, yesterday morning, a Saturday, I did order a PDF of what I thought was going to be information about my house that would include the deed that I needed and somehow I had misplaced.
The domain, Public Records Data, in it’s header come-on, promised a plethora of information about my property. Scrolling down, without reading too closely, I discovered the cost would be $7 for the report.
I filled in the required information, including my credit card numbers.About five minutes later, I received a text with a link to the report. Once downloaded, I began to read.
Lots of data but the names and dates did not quite fit. For example, it had me purchasing the house in 2003 when I had bought it in 2000. And there was no deed.
My tightened stomach told me I had screwed up. So did Rebecca, when I told her what I had done as I handed her a first cup of coffee.
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“You did what,” she said. “You’ve got to contact your bank, and the credit card company.”
“The website looked legit,” I replied, even as a feeling of dread swept over me.
Not a complete idiot, I first went to my online bank account. There was the $7 charge from Public Records Data, out of Las Vegas. Damn. I reloaded the bank site, and a $26 charge appeared from the same company. Double damn.
Next I called the number on the back of my debit card. Fidgeting and berating myself while on hold for about 10 minutes, I explained the situation to the Visa fraud specialist. She pulled up my account, including the two recent payments, and gave me the Public Records Data phone number. She said it looked like a legitimate business.
As I worked the problem, I began to calm down. Rebecca sat on the back porch every so often asking for an update. I called Public Records Data and, with very little waiting time, got a second real person. She asked for my email address and looked up my account.
I told her I understood the $7 charge but not the $26. She replied the additional charge was for a monthly subscription to their service automatically added whenever anyone purchases a report which was, she said, in the fine print.
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I cancelled everything and asked that my information be deleted from their site. She said it would be done immediately. Two minutes later, three emails from Public Records Data described the expungement of “Paul” from the site. They even refunded my $7.
I carried my computer out to the back porch to join Rebecca, still feeling unsettled. Public Records Data was not like the DC ice cream scammer. When I looked again at its web site, in smallish print, but not hidden, it describes the service it provides, pulling public information, from third party sites, and makes no promises about the accuracy of its information.
For someone not paying close attention, like the fellow in the image, intended to mimic me, it’s easy to purchase something that really is bogus. In that sense, the company is playing on the vulnerabilities of people who are looking for easy access to the information they need.
But are older people, like my mother, like me, uniquely susceptible to this phenomenon? As Rebecca says, I’ve always acted rashly, often jumping into things before I’ve thought them through. Exactly what I did this morning.
Perhaps there’s no reason to fit a tendency I’ve had at every age into an aging narrative. On the other hand, I believe Joe Biden at some point in his first term, before the disastrous debate with Donald Trump, did age out of being an effective President. Perhaps, the same will be true for me, regarding the routine tasks of everyday life.
In other words, that some kind of cognitive and emotional intelligence decline will impair my judgment requiring unwanted interventions.
When that happens — if that happens — I don’t want to just pull up the drawbridge. I want to do like my friend, Will, who at 90 turned over to his son the keys of his car as his periphery eyesight declined.
Wisdom, perfectly aligned with Will’s years.
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