One more time —Beware of con games

OK, it’s been a while but I think it’s time to talk about scams once more since spring seems to bring them out of the woodwork.

Time was scams pretty much were limited to traveling con artists, going from town to town plying their “trade” and staying one jump ahead of the local constabulary. You know, like in The Sting, or even The Music Man. In most portrayals, the con artists either were lovable lugs who only targeted the greedy or the criminal or folks who really deserved to be fleeced. How many times have you heard it said that you can’t con an honest man? Sure, the scam artists broke the law, but it was for a good cause, and no innocents were hurt.

That‘s because nobody would read a story or watch a movie about a con artist stealing everything a widow had, or making off with donations for the needy or sick. Well, if it was in a noir movie or story and the con man got his in the end it might work (of course, in noir there is no happy ending and everyone gets it in the end).

Unfortunately, that’s the kind of con artists there are in real life. And as times changed, they adapted the old scams to keep up. Being able to place ads for hair-growing products, or instant weight-loss products, or ocean-front cedar glades in Arizona became a favorite means of carrying out cons once, and it still is popular. Granted, scientists have developed products that can help with hair growth or weight loss, but there still aren’t any of the miracle products promoted by con artists.

And the last time I checked, there was no ocean-front property in Arizona, except in that George Strait song.

Telephone scams always have been popular, too. Like the mail-order scams, you could be on one side of the country and pick people’s pockets and bank accounts on the other side, and be long gone before anyone caught on to you.

Hardly a week goes by that we don’t get a call here at Sixth and Hickory about the latest phone scam hitting the area. There even were a couple of Twin Lakes Area folks who got calls from “friends” of their grandchildren who were in trouble overseas, or had lost their cell phones and money, and they needed money to help them get back home. These grandparents were smart, however, and called their grandchildren, who were home safe and not in dire straits in some foreign land

Then came the computer. The Internet has proven to be manna from heaven for con artists. They can con anybody anywhere on the planet. There are variations of the old found-money switch, the lottery con, the contest winner and virtually any con game you can imagine. I mean, people will buy houses and property sight unseen except for pictures and videos they’ve seen online, then when they go to see it they learn they’ve “bought” a piece of dirt with a shack, a cactus and a Gila monster on it; or it’s in the middle of a swamp, or the side of a bluff.

Folks still are getting emails from Hugo Mgumbao somewhere in Nigeria offering to share a billion dollars in exchange for your bank account number and maybe a $1,000 deposit. Or from a former government minister in Iraq needing to get gold out of the country and will gladly deposit it for you in Switzerland, for a small fee, of course. Or from the former partner of an Indonesian businessman who vanished on Flight 370 who now needs to liquidate a large quantity of ill-gotten cash and just happened to run across you on Facebook and decided you had an honest face.

A new one a caller told me about Friday was the St. Matthew’s prayer rug letter, apparently from Tulsa, Okla. Apparently some folks around Mountain Home have been receiving this. It’s basically a paper “prayer rug” with a picture of Jesus that folks are supposed to pray over for blessings, then return to the sender. Then, they start getting requests for a “seed gift” for God’s work with the assurance that for whatever cash “seed” they send back, they will receive bountiful “blessings,” apparently in the form of money.

Not meaning to be offensive, but con artists use religion religiously to scam people, usually people who can ill afford to lose what money they have. Some folks find themselves desperate enough for help or divine intervention or whatever that they will send money to con artists and anxiously await heaven’s blessings. Usually, all they get are are requests to send more “seed gifts.”

Folks, if anyone approaches you by mail, by phone, by Internet, or even in person with stories like this, toss it in the trash, hang up, delete it or run away. It just ain’t real. It doesn’t matter who it’s from or what it promises. There’s no ocean-front property in Arizona, no free money from Nigeria, and no heavenly blessings from Tulsa.