Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Beware, old scams never die - the Six Degrees of Separation look-alike
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
We were walking along 57the Street towards the subway, when a passing man
caught my eye. He stopped, smiled and spoke: “ Hello again…C’mon, you know
who I am. You remember me. It will come to you, keep thinking.”
As he kept talking, indeed it came to me. It was nearly two decades ago,
and his hair had been red. “Yes, I knew your father,” I responded, and the
man’s smile turned into a frown, he waved his hand in front of his face as
if to dismiss me, half-turned and briskly strode away, disappearing in the
weekend crowd down the sidewalk.
It was the East Side “Six degrees of Separation” look-alike scammer, last
seen on Irving Place and adjacent side streets in the 1980s, who had some
local knowledge and talked passing strangers into lending him emergency
cabfare and other funds, by charming them into naming their best Black
friend, and pretending to be the man’s son. Articles were written about him
in local papers, too late for me, after I had lent him a fiver. The smile
and the act came back to mind instantly, even years later. I almost
regretted not letting him continue the con, to find out what his new scheme
is, but we were in a hurry.
“Six Degrees of Separation,” a 1990 play by John Guare, had a young man,
pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier, scam a professorial family of
Central Park by talking the gullible couple out of major sums. There had
been a major real-life prototype, David Hampton, who had inveigled West
Siders into putting money in his fake schemes, until caught and jailed. He
died in 2003, at 39. Old cons may pass away, but their art stays on.
I was reminded of this a few days ago, after receiving e-mail from
ostensibly an official of the Internal Private Banking Department of the
HSBC Bank, with a yahoo.co.uk address, who, after an elaborate explanation
of a dead heirless multi-million dollar account of which he had control,
offered to nominate me as the next-of-kin, and share the proceeds, before
the bank’s Total Quality of Management policy forces him to declare the
inactive account defunct. It was a modernized version, with proper terms of
economics, of the old Nigerian 411 “dead general” scam of the early 2000s,
which had a long run and still continues. The objective is to engage you in
correspondence, in the course of which the crooks will obtain your bank
account information, to deposit the “funds,” actually to clean out your
account.
More recently there has been a version of the scam that plays off the
misfortunes that have beset Michail Khodorkovsky of Russia’s Yukos Oil. The
Russian tycoon, worth $15B, was arrested in 2003 on a Siberian airfield
while trying to leave the country, and convicted of corrupt business
practices, although the facts indicate that this was Putin’s revenge for
organizing an opposition party.
The scammers, totally up to date, instantly concocted a spurious letter
from Khodorkovsky’s wife Leila (her real name is Irina), evoking sympathy
for the fallen billionaire and asking for financial advice in transferring
and investing funds in the US. Another letter, from a Larissa Sosnotchkaya,
Khodorkovsky’s “personal treasurer,” took the outright path of the original
Nigerian ploy.
The modern crooks to really worry come under the heading of “phishers,” and
work with e-mail requests for data needed to reconfirm your account
information. They come from pretend financial organizations with reputable
names, and nearly legitimate looking e-mail addresses. Notable are the
phony messages from WaMu , the giant Washington Mutual Bank and PayPal, the
payment clearing firm for Internet purchases, part of the eBay
organization. Their e-mail addresses contain the names of the real firms,
and accessing their websites you will find legitimate-looking logos and
home page information. If they obtain your Social Security number, bank
account or credit card number, the phishers will change the account’s
address and use it to open credit cards accounts in your name, and have
even succeeded in obtaining major mortgages.
All e-mail from unknown sources can be dangerous, and you should never open
the attachments, which may contain viruses or similar traps to the unary.
Delete the messages, and check the internet for the ones that look like
attempts at phishing, by searching the company name followed by the word
“scam.” The internet detectives are very efficient in routing out the
phonies and publicizing them. If you think that the thieves have already
managed to use your name, call the Federal Trade Commission’s hotline
1-877-IDTHEFT for helpful advice (there are also web sites). By being
cautious about your e-mail and staying away from suspicious and salacious
looking web sites the user can avoid a lot of the damages that befall the
unwary.
But if that guy with the charming smile stops you on the street and insists
that you know him, or his Dad, you are on your own. He will make sure that
no cops are around. Walking away is best, playing along may be costly, he
can really sell.
We were walking along 57the Street towards the subway, when a passing man
caught my eye. He stopped, smiled and spoke: “ Hello again…C’mon, you know
who I am. You remember me. It will come to you, keep thinking.”
As he kept talking, indeed it came to me. It was nearly two decades ago,
and his hair had been red. “Yes, I knew your father,” I responded, and the
man’s smile turned into a frown, he waved his hand in front of his face as
if to dismiss me, half-turned and briskly strode away, disappearing in the
weekend crowd down the sidewalk.
It was the East Side “Six degrees of Separation” look-alike scammer, last
seen on Irving Place and adjacent side streets in the 1980s, who had some
local knowledge and talked passing strangers into lending him emergency
cabfare and other funds, by charming them into naming their best Black
friend, and pretending to be the man’s son. Articles were written about him
in local papers, too late for me, after I had lent him a fiver. The smile
and the act came back to mind instantly, even years later. I almost
regretted not letting him continue the con, to find out what his new scheme
is, but we were in a hurry.
“Six Degrees of Separation,” a 1990 play by John Guare, had a young man,
pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier, scam a professorial family of
Central Park by talking the gullible couple out of major sums. There had
been a major real-life prototype, David Hampton, who had inveigled West
Siders into putting money in his fake schemes, until caught and jailed. He
died in 2003, at 39. Old cons may pass away, but their art stays on.
I was reminded of this a few days ago, after receiving e-mail from
ostensibly an official of the Internal Private Banking Department of the
HSBC Bank, with a yahoo.co.uk address, who, after an elaborate explanation
of a dead heirless multi-million dollar account of which he had control,
offered to nominate me as the next-of-kin, and share the proceeds, before
the bank’s Total Quality of Management policy forces him to declare the
inactive account defunct. It was a modernized version, with proper terms of
economics, of the old Nigerian 411 “dead general” scam of the early 2000s,
which had a long run and still continues. The objective is to engage you in
correspondence, in the course of which the crooks will obtain your bank
account information, to deposit the “funds,” actually to clean out your
account.
More recently there has been a version of the scam that plays off the
misfortunes that have beset Michail Khodorkovsky of Russia’s Yukos Oil. The
Russian tycoon, worth $15B, was arrested in 2003 on a Siberian airfield
while trying to leave the country, and convicted of corrupt business
practices, although the facts indicate that this was Putin’s revenge for
organizing an opposition party.
The scammers, totally up to date, instantly concocted a spurious letter
from Khodorkovsky’s wife Leila (her real name is Irina), evoking sympathy
for the fallen billionaire and asking for financial advice in transferring
and investing funds in the US. Another letter, from a Larissa Sosnotchkaya,
Khodorkovsky’s “personal treasurer,” took the outright path of the original
Nigerian ploy.
The modern crooks to really worry come under the heading of “phishers,” and
work with e-mail requests for data needed to reconfirm your account
information. They come from pretend financial organizations with reputable
names, and nearly legitimate looking e-mail addresses. Notable are the
phony messages from WaMu , the giant Washington Mutual Bank and PayPal, the
payment clearing firm for Internet purchases, part of the eBay
organization. Their e-mail addresses contain the names of the real firms,
and accessing their websites you will find legitimate-looking logos and
home page information. If they obtain your Social Security number, bank
account or credit card number, the phishers will change the account’s
address and use it to open credit cards accounts in your name, and have
even succeeded in obtaining major mortgages.
All e-mail from unknown sources can be dangerous, and you should never open
the attachments, which may contain viruses or similar traps to the unary.
Delete the messages, and check the internet for the ones that look like
attempts at phishing, by searching the company name followed by the word
“scam.” The internet detectives are very efficient in routing out the
phonies and publicizing them. If you think that the thieves have already
managed to use your name, call the Federal Trade Commission’s hotline
1-877-IDTHEFT for helpful advice (there are also web sites). By being
cautious about your e-mail and staying away from suspicious and salacious
looking web sites the user can avoid a lot of the damages that befall the
unwary.
But if that guy with the charming smile stops you on the street and insists
that you know him, or his Dad, you are on your own. He will make sure that
no cops are around. Walking away is best, playing along may be costly, he
can really sell.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 8:07 PM 
