How Social Security Scammers Tried to Swindle a Fraud Expert

Just hang up

Understand that government agencies will never use the phone to tell you of a possible infraction or problem. If you get a call from someone claiming to be from the government and warning you of an issue, hang up. Most likely, it’s just fraud.

Then he asked: “Do you accept all of these allegations under your name?”

Another absurd, disorienting question. “Well, I — I — I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“Now listen to me very carefully,” he said, more kindly. “We have been keeping a close watch on you and after going over your past reports, we believe this might not have been done by you. … We don’t have any evidence that you performed  criminal  activity. But since your Social Security number came under this drug trafficking case, we need you to cooperate with us in finding that person.”

Going from threatening to being my best pal also is right out of the swindler’s playbook. A primary objective of all scammers is to get the victim “under the ether” — slang for a heightened emotional state where the victim no longer is thinking rationally but rather is reacting emotionally out of fear or excitement. Victims who are under the ether are significantly easier to manipulate.

“Right now, you have two simple options, Mr. Johnson,” he continued. Either I could let the case play out and “accept legal actions,” or I could give him the phone number for Social Security so he could call over and start the process of clearing my name. Huh? I  of course  chose the second  option,  but asked why I needed to give him the number when he worked at the place. He said it was so I could be certain that the person who called me next really was from Social Security because “there are a lot of scams out there, Mr. Johnson, and I wouldn’t want you to fall for one of them.”

A network of thieves 

Phone scams aren’t usually executed by individual bad guys. Most involve multiple role players, digital experts, spoofing technology and more. These operations are sophisticated and professional.

After some initial banter, he got to business: “If you want to prove you’re innocent, the very first thing I will have to do is issue a new Social Security number.” But to do that, he said, all my financial accounts would have to be “safeguarded” first so criminals couldn’t access them. Then the pressure got turned up: “The government is providing you 40 to 45 minutes time to resolve this matter. So can you confirm that in your Chase banking account you have $12,000 and in your Wells Fargo account you have $85,000? Is that correct?”

“Yes, but—” I blurted out trying to slow him down. But he seemed to actually speed up.

“What you have to do is go to your bank and withdraw all the money from your account as cash, then I will let you know what you will do next. I want you to go to the Chase bank account and withdraw that money. “

“Right now?” I asked.

“Right now, yes. Because we want to safeguard your money first. That is the reason.”

“I don’t know if I want to give you my money.”

“Oh, no, who told you that you were giving me your money? You are not going to give your money to anyone, Mr. Johnson. If you have that thing in your mind, please take that out of your mind. No. No one is asking for money from you and you are not paying the money to anyone.”

Scam Alert: Scammers are impersonating SSA employees

He repeated this a few times, in a few different ways, to reassure me. I asked, “Why can’t I just put the money into a new bank account?” 

“Well, Mr. Johnson, if you open a new bank account you will be linking the same Social Security card number that you have right now, am I correct?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I conceded.

“That is the problem.”

His instructions: Withdraw $12,000 from my Chase account immediately and convert it to “government-certified bonds” so I would not lose it to the criminal who stole my Social Security number. What did he mean by “government-certified bonds”? 

“These are prepaid cards that are available in government-certified stores like Apple stores, Walmart, Target, CVS, Walgreens. These are government-certified stores, I believe you know that, right?”

At this point, I’m starting to get mad: How many thousands of older people had he and guys like him persuaded to take out their life savings and buy prepaid debit cards? But I stayed with it. He reassured me again that I was supposed to hold onto those cards until they issued a new Social Security card. I asked Shaw, “Do I give you the ‘government-certified bonds’?”

“No. You hang onto the bonds. That is my whole point. They will never leave your possession and so you have nothing to worry about. If they never leave your hands, then you cannot ever lose that money, am I right, Mr. Johnson? In fact, it is protected. After you convert the cash to government-certified bonds, two representatives from Social Security will come to your doorstep in 48 hours to hand-deliver your new Social Security card. Then you can open new accounts and redeposit the bonds into your bank account.”

Okay — well, that is persuasive. But then came the bomb:

“Now, once you get the government-certified bonds, you just have to provide us the serial numbers so we can make sure we can update that on your file.”

And that’s how they steal your money, ladies  and  gentlemen. With the serial number, they are free to withdraw the money and disappear. This is the point where I changed personas from Carl Johnson, easy target, to Doug Shadel, fraud fighter.

“Doesn’t that give you access to all the money that is on those cards?”

He  of course  lied in response. “No! We are not going to need to access the funds. We just need the serial numbers to update your files. Those are yours and they are safeguarded. The whole point of putting the money on those government-issued bonds is to safeguard them, so no, nothing will happen to the money. You have my word on that, Mr. Johnson.” Angry, but with all my questions answered, I simply ended the call.

Epilogue

Mr. Shaw called me back more than a dozen times, but I didn’t answer. When the goal is over $80,000 in potential cash, expert crooks like Mr. Shaw will say anything to win you over. I didn’t need to hear any more.