The Lottery Scam That Almost Turned Deadly Part 1
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 July 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A woman in a Texas suburb is enjoying her retirement years with her husband when she gets a call that will change their lives. According to the voice on the phone, she's won an overseas lottery. Millions of dollars and a new luxury car will be delivered to her front door. But before she can collect the cash and other prizes, she must send money to the man on the phone. At first, she's told she needs to pay taxes, then lawyers' fees. As the demands to send cash mount, her bank account is drained. Nine months later, the couple has lost everything and is forced to sell their home.
Lottery scams are on the rise in the U.S., with more than a half-million complaints in North America in the past three years. The island nation of Jamaica is a hotbed for this criminal activity. These scams have cost Americans millions of dollars and led to increased gang warfare in Jamaica that has upped the murder rate there. To combat this growing issue, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Jamaica Constabulary Force, along with other U.S. agencies, are dedicating resources to shut down lottery scams. One postal inspector came across a scammer's financial trail that led back to the Texas couple who'd been drawn in by a lottery scam. When the inspector arrived in Texas, he couldn't believe what he found: Not only had the scammer drained the couple's savings, but he was now operating a romance scam — with the woman as his target.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week on AARP the perfect scam. |
| 0:02.3 | It's the type of fraud where you literally need no infrastructure, you need nothing more than a telephone |
| 0:07.1 | to be able to conduct it. And they literally have the belief that an armored car is going to pull up in the front of their |
| 0:12.0 | home carrying their $8 million. |
| 0:15.8 | For AARP the Perfect Scam, I'm Will Johnson. |
| 0:18.3 | Welcome back to a new round of stories. |
| 0:20.3 | We'll be digging into Robocalls, Scams targeting servicemen and women, a psychic scam, and even a scam that almost, almost turns deadly. |
| 0:28.8 | And we couldn't do all this without our AARP fraud watch network ambassador Frank Abagnale. |
| 0:33.4 | Frank, welcome back, it's good to see you once again. |
| 0:35.6 | Great to be here. |
| 0:36.2 | Thanks for having me. |
| 0:37.2 | Frank, I know you're always busy looking at scams helping people out. |
| 0:41.6 | What have you been up to? |
| 0:42.3 | Well, for one, I know you've written a book. Yeah, it's another book my fifth book and this one is is called scam me if you can. I didn't pick the title the did, but basically I tried to in this book look at every |
| 0:56.0 | conceivable scam that we know of and how they work, make it very easy if people understand |
| 1:01.3 | what the words people say over the phone, what things people do. |
| 1:05.3 | So if they read the book and they pick up all these scams, when they get that call, they get that |
| 1:09.5 | email, they get that letter, they'll recognize it for what it is a scam. |
| 1:14.0 | And I took into consideration not only seniors, but people who invest in the stock market, |
| 1:19.0 | Bitcoin, cyber currency, all of the scams that are going on right now and bringing the book very much up to date |
| 1:25.3 | is kind of a reference book that not only once you read it, but you're able to turn around and go look things up |
| 1:31.6 | if you forgot about it or you need to understand how a scam works, a |
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