Once the biggest amount of money you've ever been scammed out of.

Maybe you got pickpocketed one time, $100.

Somebody you gave cash to because they had a sob story, and later you thought about it and they were probably lying.

Or maybe somebody got a hold of your credit card and they bought junk on eBay, although

usually your credit card company will reimburse you for that.

The other day, for at least half an hour, about an hour actually, I got totally sucked into

a phone scam, which I'm a bit embarrassed by because I used to be quite adept at not only seeing

phone scams from a mile away, but actively playing with the scammers for sport. When I lived in New York, I received multiple

calls from Windows. You know the computer company? Windows? Bad news. They told me they'd

discovered a virus on my computer, but don't worry, I could download

their antivirus software and they'd scrub it for me. With that scam, I would just draw things out

as long as I could. Oh, no. Okay, hold on. I need to boot up my computer. And I'd wait five minutes.

Oh, wait a minute. Was it my Mac or my PC? I just booted up my

Mac. Was it my PC? Hold on. Another five minutes. I could, while making coffee, eating a bagel and

watching old news radio reruns, often waste a solid half hour of the scammers time before they got

angry and hung up on me. When I moved to Austin, I got a phone

call from Publishers Clearinghouse. You're never going to believe it, guys. I had won Publishers

Clearing House. But in order to collect all that money, I needed to pay the tax in advance,

inexplicably through CVS gift cards or something.

So in that instance, I got very excited and I said, this is amazing.

I could really use that money.

Is Ed McMahon going to come to my house?

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