{"id":18200,"date":"2022-02-04T10:45:03","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T18:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/02\/04\/news-11933\/"},"modified":"2022-02-04T10:45:03","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T18:45:03","slug":"news-11933","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/02\/04\/news-11933\/","title":{"rendered":"They Were \u2018Calling to Help.\u2019 Then They Stole Thousands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Becca Andrews| Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

Becca Andrews<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One December morning,<\/span> my mother\u2019s phone rang. She tugged the iPhone from the holster she kept clipped to the waist of her blue jeans and wondered who might be calling. Perhaps someone from church was checking in on her recovery from the coronavirus<\/a>. \u201cHello?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The voice that greeted her was masculine. The caller sounded concerned, and he told her something was wrong with her Amazon account. \u201cSomeone has access to your bank accounts through Amazon, and they can take all your money. I\u2019m calling to help.\u201d Her mind raced. Oh Lord<\/em>, she prayed silently, Oh Lord, give me strength<\/em>. The voice was warm and reassuring, and my mom tried to focus closely on his words. My dad was driving to work in his truck, and she was home alone. She had been cooped up in the house for weeks with Covid, isolated from her community, and she missed the balm of a friendly voice.<\/p>\n

She tried to steady herself. The man said he needed information to make sure the money was safe<\/a>. He transferred her to a different male voice\u2014again soothing, reassuring, calm. She promised not to hang up. A brain injury decades earlier made it hard for her to follow his instructions, but she stuck with it. The voice explained slowly, carefully, how to swipe and tap her phone until she had installed an app that allowed him to see what was happening on her screen. Now he followed her every move.<\/p>\n

After some hours, she mentioned she had to relieve herself. \u201cIt\u2019s OK, I\u2019ll stay on the line,\u201d he said. She parked the phone outside the bathroom and picked it back up when she was done. As noon approached, she told him, \u201cI have to eat.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll wait, it\u2019s OK. Don\u2019t hang up, we\u2019ll lose all our progress.\u201d She set the phone down on the counter to make a sandwich, then pulled some chips from a cabinet and padded over to the kitchen table.<\/p>\n

The phone buzzed with a text\u2014it was my father, checking in. She typed back that there was a problem, but she was fixing it, she had it all taken care of. She tapped the tiny white arrow next to the message field to send her reply, and then she heard the voice, its volume elevated. It sounded angry. She frowned and brought the phone back up to her ear. \u201cWhy would you do that? You can\u2019t tell anyone! What if he\u2019s in on it?\u201d She felt confused. That didn\u2019t make any sense. But she also didn\u2019t fully trust herself. She was worn out from her slow recovery, and the steroids she was taking as treatment gave her a hollow buzz of energy.<\/p>\n

A 20-minute drive away, my dad sat at his bare desk under a harsh LED light in the office of an automotive manufacturing plant. Reading her message, he felt a prickle of anxiety. But he, too, was on the mend from Covid, and his mind felt foggy. He had recently started a new job as a manager at the factory, and he was still figuring out his colleagues and their processes. He got another message, this one from a coworker, and he forgot about his wife\u2019s text. He adjusted his mask and switched to composing an email he had been meaning to send.<\/p>\n

At home, my mother dug out her worn, printed-out packet of passwords from a pile of books and old church bulletins on a side table and flipped through its curling pages. She returned to her chair in the kitchen and followed along as the man told her where to enter them. She tapped to install Cash App and opened up PayPal. She downloaded Coinbase. She set up Zelle so she could easily send money directly from her bank account. She didn\u2019t recognize all the names, but she wrote down her new passwords in the margins of her document. As the afternoon wore on, she began wishing for a nap. \u201cWe\u2019re almost done,\u201d the man assured her. \u201cHe\u2019s going to be home soon, my husband will be home soon,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She just wanted to be finished and then to never think about it again. The technology made her feel like she was fumbling in the dark, and she was reluctant to ask more questions. Outside, the sun had dipped well below the wooden fence surrounding the backyard, and the house had fallen into a gloom when the man finally ended the call. The phone felt warm in her hand as she shoved it back into its holster.<\/p>\n

That night, when my father got home, he noticed right away that something was off. My mother was jittery and fussing with gadgets on the kitchen counters. Food sat out on the stove, and he was hungry, but he suddenly remembered the text from earlier. \u201cWhat happened today?\u201d he asked. She shook her head. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to do anything, I got it all taken care of,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGot what taken care of?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not supposed to tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother thought she had labored for hours doing what was necessary to protect herself and her family. Instead, the scammer had siphoned away<\/a> all of her personal information\u2014her social security number, date of birth, driver\u2019s license number\u2014and about $11,000. The new financial apps she\u2019d installed were all portals<\/a> through which more of my parents\u2019 money could flow into strangers\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n

In the next months, my father and I tried the best we could to undo the damage. It was a frustrating journey. Getting scammed<\/a> was dehumanizing on its own, but so were the hours spent begging customer service people for help. I pleaded. I raged. I started to wish the app companies could take a page from our scammer. Because where he had come across as friendly and reassuring, I got chilly half-replies, or just as often, silence. By the end, all I wanted was for someone to show some empathy\u2014to say, perhaps, \u201cI\u2019m calling to help. It\u2019s OK. We\u2019re almost done. I\u2019ll stay with you till we\u2019re done.\u201d<\/p>\n

My parents were<\/span> college sweethearts who met outside the mechanical engineering building at Mississippi State University in Starkville. At the time, my mother was recovering from a traumatic car crash that left her with frequent partial seizures, which made it harder for her to study. But she managed to become one of the rare women to graduate with a civil engineering degree, and as she likes to tell me now, the only one in her surveying class who didn\u2019t chew tobacco. A year later, my dad graduated and joined the Navy as a mechanical engineer, and they got married.<\/p>\n

After that, my mom\u2019s seizures began to worsen. When they moved to a base in Tennessee, the state denied her a driver\u2019s license, and she was devastated. She visited doctors and underwent extensive testing. The physicians gave her two choices. She could take a medication to help control the seizures, but she would still be unable to drive. Or she could undergo a risky surgery to remove the scar tissue on her brain and, with luck, end the seizures. Once my little sister and I were born, she realized she desperately needed to be able to drive. She got the surgery.<\/p>\n

Her recovery was tough. She ping-ponged between unspeakable fury and unstoppable tears. Her short-term memory was unreliable, and she had a hard time with text. At bedtime she liked to read me stories from Alice in Bibleland<\/em>, but she often stumbled on the words and glared at them in frustration. When she got stuck on a page, I would pick up where she left off and tell the tale from memory, hoping to soothe her.<\/p>\n

After about a year, she recovered, and her life went back to normal. But as more time passed, I again noticed her struggling with basic tasks. She became overwhelmed fixing meals that once were routine and got angry when she forgot where she had placed her keys. Ever since then, I have felt a responsibility to protect my mother from what my dad calls \u201ctwo-legged monsters\u201d\u2014\u00adpeople who can sniff out weakness and prey on her friendly, open nature.<\/p>\n

The evening of the phone call, my father again asked my mother about her text message, and the story spilled out. His stomach in knots, he swept past the food on the stove to the living room to grab his iPad. He sank into his creaky recliner and pulled up their USAA bank accounts. He could see the withdrawals: $10,000 to Coinbase, $999 to Zelle, $70 to Cash App. For some reason\u2014perhaps to cause confusion\u2014$2,000 had been moved from their savings account to a credit union they used. He felt queasy.<\/p>\n

He phoned USAA and spent the next hours on the line with the bank. My mother, agitated, perched on the armrest beside him, trying to recall her conversations with the scammers. \u201cI can\u2019t remember. I don\u2019t know what to do,\u201d she said repeatedly, straightening to walk a few paces and then collapsing into her own recliner a few feet away. Then she\u2019d spring to her feet again and peer over his shoulder. The USAA representative helped them to deactivate Zelle but did nothing about the $999 transferred through it.<\/p>\n

When the call ended, my parents huddled around her phone and thumbed through the unfamiliar payment apps. They eventually zeroed in on changing their passwords. They turned to the password packet, but neither she nor my dad could decipher her notes. \u201cThis was so stupid. I can\u2019t believe I did this, so stupid,\u201d she said, again and again. When my dad finally sat down to eat, he lifted his fork to his mouth without tasting much. That night, they barely slept.<\/p>\n

The next day, during his lunch break, my father did what many parents with tech problems do. He called one of his children\u2014me. I\u00a0was on a work trip that kept me frantically busy, and I had just given in to the urge to take a short nap. I had barely closed my eyes when the phone rang. \u201cHello!\u201d he said, his voice uncannily chipper. \u201cHi,\u201d I answered cautiously. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just need to talk this through and figure out how to handle this,\u201d my dad said. I kicked the covers off and sat up straight. His voice dropped down a half octave as he abandoned his cheery tone and gave me the basic outline. His lunch break was ending soon, so we agreed to continue the conversation later. Feeling antsy, I poured myself a glass of water and paced around my Airbnb, thinking. Then I sat down at my laptop and started to type.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome privacy thoughts,\u201d I wrote to my dad. \u201cNow they have y\u2019all\u2019s address. Make sure she knows not to open the door for anyone she doesn\u2019t know.\u201d I ticked off more items: Contact Experian, the credit monitoring agency; shut down the accounts for the apps she\u2019d installed; contact the IRS in case of identity theft.<\/p>\n

That night, after work, my dad called back, and together we set up fraud alerts through Experian. My father texted me the password to my mom\u2019s PayPal account, and I managed to shut it down. He got back on the line with USAA, and that night\u2014fortunately\u2014learned he could recoup nearly $10,000.<\/p>\n

The relief was hollow. We still felt exposed. I hadn\u2019t closed all the accounts yet, and we weren\u2019t sure if the scammers could still see everything my mother typed into her phone. She still spends her days home alone. They could easily call back. My father, utterly worn out, said he couldn\u2019t do any more that night. We hung up.<\/p>\n

The next day, around noon, I finally called my mother to ask for her version of the events. Her reply was simple, and the pain behind her words was clear. \u201cI did a stupid thing,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m so stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her words rang in my head. Right then my mom needed a daughter, not a technical assistant. My mind jumped to skipping my flight home to California, renting a car, and rerouting to West Tennessee to reassure her in person. But I was due back at work, and I headed to the airport instead.<\/p>\n

That day has become a clear demarcation in time for me. Sure, we got most of the money back. But I no longer trust that my parents are safe. That\u2019s why, in the following year, I moved back to the South to be closer to home.<\/p>\n

For weeks and<\/span> months after the phone call, I sank into deeper and deeper rungs of customer service hell. The worst experience was trying to close my mom\u2019s Cash App account. For a while, my correspondent at Cash App kept addressing me in emails as \u201cJenith,\u201d which is neither my name nor my mother\u2019s. No matter what I did, I couldn\u2019t seem to get clear guidance. I emailed, I called, I was transferred to several agents, all of whom had different thoughts on the matter. One suggested I send documentation declaring my mother dead. Another advised gaining legal guardianship over her.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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