FUN WITH PHONE SCAMMERS

How to get laughs from the truly annoying

            I recently wrote an essay about the super-annoying phone calls I get in my job, which require all of my ability to stay calm to cope with them.

            However, there is one brand of recurrent phone calls that does NOT infuriate me – calls from scam artists seeking to separate me from my hard-earned money.

            That’s because my great-uncle was a pharmacist in Brooklyn by day and a con man the rest of the time. He actually did pretty well. One time, during Prohibition, he was driving across the Brooklyn Bridge in his car, when he banged into a Duesenberg or some other expensive vehicle. The irate owner leaped out of the Duesenberg and threatened my great-uncle with jail time and lawsuits.

            But my great-uncle shrewdly noticed that the collision had flung open the rich man’s car trunk and revealed two cases of illegal Canadian Whiskey. Great-uncle swiftly pointed out that the rich man was violating the Volstead Act. What could make this federal felony go away? Answer: the rich man paying my great-uncle a good sum of money, providing two bottles of whiskey, and assuming the costs of the car repair. It worked.

            My great-uncle told me once that con men based their success on the mark’s intelligence giving way to his desperation and emotions. That his greed would outweigh his good sense. That he would not see: “there’s something wrong with this picture.”

            Today the term is “Putting the mark under the ether,” so that he absolutely believes in the ridiculous proposal to help the Nigerian prince’s lawyer ship a gigantic trunk full of $80 million from Lagos to Los Angeles, in return for $8 million. Or that the mark has won a lottery that he never remembers having entered. Then there’s the widow or other relative of an ousted dictator, who is either dying of cancer (and wants her vast fortune to be used to help poor people) or is fleeing the dictator’s enemies. Or that a woman you just met on the Internet has fallen madly in love with you after swapping two e-mails, will marry you next week, but first needs $700 from you to pay for groceries and tampons. Preferably sent by Amazon.

An even more ridiculous one that has vanished (along with many US troops in the Middle East, usually into graves) is the American service member who has just stumbled on Saddam’s gold. He wants me to help him violate federal law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice by helping him bring the gold home. Just to tap into my emotions, he adds that his brother was killed the other day. The signature block, of course, includes a military unit that has no connection to reality. My emotion is to laugh hard.

It’s not new. All across the Philippines, fake maps are sold routinely, pointing suckers to the hideout of Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita’s gold, which he supposedly nicked from the Filipino treasury in Manila and hid in the boondocks of Baguio. Or Bataan. Or Cabanatuan. Or somewhere, usually in the map-maker’s imagination.

            Another one I got by e-mail was a request from someone who disguised himself as a Society for American Baseball Research pal, who said he was traveling and needed to purchase a Google Gift Card for his niece. This one I actually bit into, saying that I would be happy to purchase a $25 card and mail it to his niece with an appropriate greeting.

            Oh, no, no, no, said my “pal.” He needed me to purchase $400 worth of gift cards, peel off their stickers, and scan their numbers to him.

            At this point, I snarled at him very bluntly, saying that I no longer believed for one minute that he was who he said he was. I demanded that he prove it by telling me who led the National League in Runs Batted In in 1990. For a bigshot in the Society for American Baseball Research, that would not be hard to answer. Heck, anyone with a computer can answer it. However, you have to know baseball terms like “National League” and “Runs Batted In.” The answer is Matt Williams of the San Francisco Giants, 110, by the way.

After I fired off this e-mail, I never heard from the con man again. I did hear from the real guy, and we had a good laugh over it.

            However, I can hit “delete” and “spam” on an e-mail. The phone is a different subject. We get these calls at home, and our phone simply blocks those it doesn’t recognize. We have Caller ID, so when we see idiotic phone numbers, we can ignore them. My cell phone marks incoming calls as “Spam,” so I can block them.

            I have no such luxury at work. If the phone rings, I have to answer it. That “unknown” number could be the media or the mayor. So I do.

            And I get these scenarios:

            1. The IRS Fraud. An Indian or Pakistani male voice tells me he’s “John Smith” from the Internal Revenue Service, and I owe Uncle Sam a vast amount of money. I only have an hour or so to pay up, and if I do not do so, the local police will arrive at my doorstep and take me to the “goat house,” strip me of driver’s license, real estate ownings, bank account, and even my citizenship, on the spot.

            What I have to do, he says, is follow “the four protocols” to avoid this horrific fate: first, purchase a designated sum of money in Google cards at an authorized IRS store (like Target). Second, do NOT tell the cashier that I am using the cards to pay tax debt, as he will have to raise their price for the cards because of the purpose. Third, read off the numbers on the backs of the cards over the phone to “John Smith.” Fourth, do not hang up or put him on hold at any time, or the police will arrest me.

            My answer is pretty simple. “Enough of this. You’ve got me dead to rights. I do indeed owe that sum of money. Heck, I owe a lot more. I owe the IRS about $30 billion that I’ve embezzled over the years from the companies I’ve run. I emptied the pension funds. I rifled the operational accounts. I even went through the petty cash boxes. I’m guilty as sin. You know what? It’s time I paid the price for all this high living. I’m just going to sit down here on the porch of my house, with my lawyer next to me, with this line open, and wait here for the cops to show up and arrest me. We can talk while we’re waiting. How many years do you think I’m going to get? Which prison will they send me to? Should I pack a bag of personal toiletries for when I’m arrested? My lawyer says I should make bail pretty quickly, being this is a non-violent first offense.”

            At this point, the con man, realizing he’s going to waste his time and phone bill on a useless call that will go on for hours, tries to find a way out of it , argues with me, or just hangs up.

            2. The car warranty. I mentioned this in my last column. My car warranty is about to expire. “Oh, my heavens, how can I survive?” I gasp.

            “We can get you a new car warranty. What kind of car do you drive?”

            “Oh, that’s easy. I drive a General Motors 1944 Model M4 A3 E8 Sherman tank, which fires flat trajectory 76mm High Explosive and Armor-Piercing ordnance, it really cuts through traffic…hello?”

            3. Solar panels. They’ve studied Google maps and looking at the photo of my house, they think my home would be perfect for one. Actually, we once had the solar panel guy come out. He stared at the house and said that we were beat, because we didn’t have a roof that faced south all day long.

            Apparently, that guy’s competitors can’t read a map, so they are eager to sell me solar panels.

            “Well, first off, I don’t live there anymore. I…um…recently sold the house. I don’t want to go into it,” I say, sounding sad.

            “Oh, well…where do you live now?”

            I give my workplace address, and tell the guy to send over a salesman right away. “If this can save me money, I’m all for it!” I say, glowingly.

            The solar panel people mobilize a salesman, who drives through the streets of Newark at top speed to…City Hall. Then he or she calls me from the company car and says, “I’m at your address, and it’s a government building!”

            “That’s right,” I say. “I have to live at my job, now. I have a cot in my office, use a shower on the fourth floor, and store my clothes in a broom closet.”

            All the salesperson can do is fume angrily at me having wasted his time.

            4. Turnabout is fair play. Sometimes the con man is a con woman, and as she launches into her spiel, I listen for a bit, and then ask, “What are you wearing?”

            “Excuse me?”

            “What are you wearing?” I ask, in what I hope is a seductive voice. “A garter belt?”

            “What do you think this is?” the woman asks.

            “Wait…isn’t this a sex chat line?” I blurt out, sounding baffled.

            The speed with which the caller hangs up is hilarious.

            5. “I Am Not A Crook.” This is a variation on the IRS caller. I slide into my imitation of Richard M. Nixon and tell the Indian IRS man that as the 37^th President of the United States, I am always ready to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service, in the same way I cooperated with the Senate Watergate Committee and worked to achieve détente through tri-lateral diplomacy with Russia and China. I’m the “New Nixon!”

            “When were you born, sir?” he asks.

            Quoting Tricky Dick’s memoirs’ opening line, I say, “January 9, 1913. I was born in the house that my father built, in Yorba Linda, California. My father owned a lemon ranch. Poorest lemon ranch in California, I can assure you. It was only after he sold it that they found oil on it.”

            As I drag out my answers to the questions, based on Nixon’s life, (including his Social Security Number, which is all over the web), at some point the Indian (or his supervisor) realizes he is being had. After all, Nixon was born in 1913 and died in 1994. All his troubles with the IRS in the deep bosom of the Pacific Ocean are buried.

            One of these faux IRS men realized he was being had, and called me a term that is unfit for most consumption. I snarled back, telling him that his language was disgraceful for a representative of the Internal Revenue Service, and I would be complaining in writing to the department, and demanded his name again. He hung up.

            5. Joe McCarthy’s spoor. I can use this on anybody, no matter what the scam. I tell the con artist that I am retired US Air Force General “Tack” Newcombe, leader of the Committee to Keep America American. “I am eight lanes to the right of the National Rifle Association, and we stand for the greatness of America and the Constitution of the United States exactly as it was written, and not as it was amended to benefit pusillanimous libtards who would sell this nation out! Our great country faces the insidious menace of worldwide Communism, whose clutching claws and bloody hands are even now wrapping themselves around our free way of life! Unless we each conform, unless we obey orders, unless we follow our orders blindly, there is no way we can remain free!”

            When the con man speaks next, I cut him off by asking, “What are you going to do about the psychopolitical objectives of the Communist Party? If we don’t outlaw Communism, American opinion could rebel in revulsive repudiation of its traditional bounds against the untraditional escalation of intrusive and compulsive accommodation.” That came from an open letter by Brig. Gen. Fred Walker, a right-wing nutjob, to President Kennedy, back in 1962. Walker also wrote about fighting “war in the Fourth Dimension” and secret underground torture complexes under the UN headquarters in New York. Walker led the Mississippi racist rioters who tried to prevent the African-American James Meredith from desegregating University of Mississippi that same year, and later was caught propositioning a decoy cop in a public men’s room in Texas. He had a few issues.

            However, I can use Walker’s weirdness, issues, and buffoonery against these folks.

            After they gasp about “war in the Fourth Dimension, I ask them, “Are you aware of the dangers of fluoridated water? 5G Towers? Chemtrails? NAFTA? Computer chips in people’s hands? What do you get when you take out the third, fifth, and sixth letter of ‘Reader’s Digest?’ There’s Communism all around! Hear the words of J. Edgar Hoover!”

            “What are they?” they splutter.

            “Communism is a menace, and never wear white after Labor Day!” I shout.

            CLICK.

            6. The Tragic Death. This is the best one.

            At first, these calls annoyed me. Someone would call me on my working line, asking to speak to one of my former colleagues, a very sweet and highly capable young lady I will call Angela Bassett, because I have a lot of admiration for the real Angela Bassett. Tremendous actress, overcame a lot, married Courtney Vance, did a fantastic job in “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”

            The caller would tell me that Angela owed his collecting firm a great deal of unspecified money and she had to pay it. Or else.

            Initially, I was irritated as heck at these requests. I’d yell back at the guy, pointing out that Angela had left the City and struck out on her own. Finally, one man was so angry at me chewing him out, he refused to go away. He refused to connect me to his supervisor. He demanded I apologize to him. He said he would keep calling me back until I did so. I gave him some more verbal grief…and he hung up. Then I blocked his phone line. He never called back.

            This was obviously counter-productive, so I needed a new strategy…one that would not go to anger.

            So this is how I deal with them now:

            Con man various openings, but it boils down to: “Hi, I’m looking for Angela Bassett. She owes a lot of money to the Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe Loanshark Company, where the customer is our chum.”

            Me stunned voice: “Angela Bassett.”

            Con man: “Yes, I believe she works there.”

            Me: “Not any more.”

            Con man: “Well, do you know where we can find her?”

            Me deep sigh: “Calvary Cemetery.”

            Con man stunned: “What?”

            Me annoyed: “Yeah. She was killed three years ago. Car crash.”

            Con man even more stunned: “What? How?”

            Me: “She and her husband had just gotten married and they were going from the church to the reception – well, they stopped at her parents’ house for photographs – when they got hit broadside by a drunk driver.”

            Con man shocked: “Holy cow.”

            Me: “Yeah. Killed Angela, her husband, the best man, and the maid of honor. And you want to know the worst part?”

            Con man fascinated in spite of himself: “What was that?”

            Me: “The driver was totally drunk and utterly unhurt. He had a six-pack of beer with him. He got out of the car, sat down on a nearby curb, drank his beer, and walked two blocks home. It was in the police report. The cops found him at home, sitting in front of the TV.”

            Con man: “My God.”

            Me: “So me and my wife are sitting at the reception, the band is playing ‘Isn’t It Romantic,’ and the pastor comes in, shaking, signals the band to stop, and tells us what had happened. Nobody knew what to do or say. Tears. The pastor came up with a little thing about ‘God’s Will,’ how they died together, and led us in a prayer. Then everyone just picked up the wedding gifts and went home. I think the catering hall donated the food to a pantry for the homeless or something.”

            Con man: “Wow.”

            Me irritated: “So I don’t think she’s going to pay you that money she owes you anytime soon. The question I have for you is…why didn’t your superiors get the word? It was in all the papers.”

            Con man flummoxed: “Well, I have to get back to my list…I’m sorry about bringing this up.”

            Me sarcastic: “Yeah, right. I don’t want to hear from you again about this. It’s a horrible memory.”

            Con man: “I’ll take you and her off our lists…you have our deepest condolences on your loss.”

            Me sarcastic: “Yeah, right.”

            Then I hang up.

            Surprisingly, I haven’t had any dunning calls for Angela Bassett for some months now. These guys make their real money by selling each other their “sucker lists,” and when these clowns realized that Angela Bassett was “dead,” they had to remove her name.

            However, for all their hilarity, these callers are somewhat easier to work with than the outraged resident who yells at me in his first words on the phone: “I WANT TO TALK TO THE MAYOR – RIGHT NOW!”

            I take a deep breath, and say, “He’s in Trenton. What do you want to do now?”

            Long silence at the other end. “Well, what’s he doing there?”

            This time I’m quicker: “Trying to get Newark more money and support.”

            Longer silence.

            “So how can I help you?” I ask.

            By now, the caller has cooled off and he states his problem…which never is something that requires the Mayor’s divided or undivided attention. Nor can it be solved easily.

            Some people can never be pleased, though.