crime | David M Masters

Help Gramma Don’t Tell Mom jail/accident Send Cash

If you’re 70 or older there is an increasing chance that you have or will be called by a grandchild in trouble. Only this is not your grandchild, and you are the one in trouble. This phone scam has been around for a while, and the biggest bucks swindled by these scammers are sourced from seniors 70 and older.

The identity scam generally yields a loss to the person who answers the phone an average of $462 in general, without regard to age, but when you separate out the victims who are 70 years and older, they are bilked for a surprising average of $9,000 as fake grandchildren are pulling on their heartstrings begging for help. Components include,

“Help Gramma, I Need Your Help”

The faux grandchild will call the elder victim and claim that they are in the most difficult circumstance, a potentially compromising situation that if it were to become public knowledge, might reflect poorly on the family. Grandparents are often sensitive to these unforeseen challenges and are willing to offer assistance discretely.

“Don’t Tell Mom”

Of course, there is the need for secrecy. If anyone else in the family were to find out, they would be devastated. This is an important part of the scheme because if the victim of elder financial fraud were to tell anyone, they might give them the head’s up that this is probably a scam. Or they might know that the grandchild is not actually in Dayton, Ohio at the time.

Jail/Accident

The criminal caller usually reports that they are restrained by some legal scenario, like being held in jail, or potentially facing criminal charges. Another popular alternative includes being in an uninsured accident and potentially facing challenges or charges. The understanding sensitive senior victim compassionately responds with something like, “Oh, dear, is there anything I can do to help”

Send Cash

As a matter of fact, there is a way that the grandparent can help this criminal out. All these problems can be instantly dealt with by inserting cash into the circumstance. And here’s where the elder financial abuse becomes criminal. And the elder mark will have to send cash dollars via mail, usually stuffed into the pages of a magazine, to an address that the victim would not recognize.

More Cash Less Risk Crime

This approach designed to scam senior citizens is a variation of the family and friend imposter scam that’s been circulating for years. As you can see, it is much more profitable for the scammer to target the elderly. Plus, the elderly are less likely to report the crime as they could be labeled as a vulnerable adult and potentially lose some of their independence.

The last thing they want to do is put their children on alert to their vulnerability, so they withhold information on the crime, while the criminals are financing their dreams in paradise by scamming the elderly, with much less risk than victimizing younger individuals.

What Can You Do?

Talk to your elderly friends and relatives and let them know about the grandparent scam, so if they get a call from a desperate grandchild they reach out to the family to verify their condition and whereabouts before trying to help them. And if they confirm with other family members that they are missing, possible consider offering assistance, but NOT in the form of cash through the mail.

If You Are a Vulnerable Adult

Check with family members, even though the grandchild (possibly a criminal posing as your grandchild) makes you promise to keep this a secret.

Stall

Sometimes stalling for a few days will allow the scam to dissipate. This is because the criminals are always on the move, changing the addresses that cash is sent to. So, if you delay, the urgency and the calling go away, as they find new numbers of alternative grandparents to go with their new mailing address.

Tighten-up Your Social Media Info

These cybercriminals are scouring the Internet and social media for their next targets, by cleaning up your profile, you may be able to reduce the likelihood of you becoming an upcoming target.

Sent Cash Already?

Contact the carrier that the cash was sent by. There may be a chance that you can catch it before it gets delivered to the recipient.

Report the Incident

You can report the incident to national authorities, like ftc.gov/complaint and your information may be able to help then track down these criminals and your report may save someone else from getting ripped off.

You may also consider reporting the incident to your State Department of Health and Human Services as they may be able to provide you with counseling, support, and help.

Should You Be in Prison?

Should you be in prison? Statistics provide predictive clues about children who when subject to certain sets of variables will end up suffering a premature death, commit suicide, or end up living a life behind bars, possibly even death row.

Keeping in mind that people are not statistics, and there are always objections to the rules, there are certain situations of lifestyles which when you see a child having to succumb to these circumstances can turn nearly anyone into an armchair prognosticator.

With hindsight being 20/20, we can review the lives and lifestyles of adults who have been incarcerated, unexpectedly arrived in emergency rooms, or prematurely registered to mortuaries.

What you find, as you might have expected, is that many of these adults lived underprivileged lives in their youth. If a child’s life is impoverished, and lacking in many areas of life, such as strong parenting figures, positive support systems, and self-esteem, this increases the chances of having trouble later in life.

This is the stereotypical observation.

The data which you might find shocking is that many adults whose lives end prematurely, live lives either revolving through the legal system or spend life behind bars, were raised in families that were thought to be privileged.

Their families lived in nice homes, lived in better areas of town. Their homes had well-manicured lawns, with nice cars in the driveway. These kids wore designer clothes, went to the best schools, got good grades, and participated in sanctioned extracurricular school activities, were members of the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, and reached high levels of achievement in and outside the classrooms.

While there are hundreds of variables, some of the most common ones include

Lack of Positive Connection

Positive connection includes spending time commiserating with family and positive role models, not excluding positive human touch. A contemporary term respecting the aspects of positive connection is, “nurturing.”

Children who are denied being able to develop a positive connection with a parent or alternatively other supportive family members may find themselves short-changed as they grow into adulthood.

Connecting with your child takes time, which many successful parents have very little of when running the rat race and trying to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. With many families depending on two incomes, there’s a good chance that there may be no one home when latchkey kids come home from school and learn to fend for themselves.

Touching is a key component in connection, without it babies die. Humans are designed to connect via positive skin-to-skin exchange. So, it’s not enough to be there, you need to be touching.

In contemporary society, the idea of touching a child probably sounded a warning alarm inside your head, because touching a child is bad. And this has set the alarms of many parents initiating a perceived panic and struggle with the idea of maintaining positive physical contact with their offspring (especially those of the opposite gender) to avoid possible misinterpretation or legal ramifications.

Many parents have found themselves trying to explain themselves in front of a judge or have even been incarcerated because someone accused them of inappropriateness in positive physical nurturing of a child.

That would strike fear into the heart of any law-abiding loving parent.

The child is left to pay the price for this lack of nurturing as they approach adulthood and continue to have to find ways to cope in a world that is out of control.

Even so, there are children who have faced the worst of circumstances in their early years, who come from the most modest, even severely abusive childhoods who become powerful members of society.

These are the unsung heroes.

If you knew the details of their childhoods, you might ask them, “Should you be in prison?”

Statistically, maybe so, but these people found the wherewithal to go against the odds, take charge of their own lives, and decided not to become a statistic.

If that’s you, I thank God for you and admire you for taking the high road to live a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

May God bless you and yours.

Missing People and Faked Deaths

With 80-90,000 who are missing every year in America, it makes you wonder where they go? In the third dimension, which most of us live in, we know it’s highly unlikely that a human being might actually vanish into thin air, as the numbers increase for missing people and faked deaths.

Conspiracy theorists have a heyday with speculating where the bodies of these people end up, but the fact remains that for the most part the world as we know it is a closed system, and most, if not all of us, are made of matter.

Then there are the devious people, or psychopaths, who occasionally fake their deaths in an attempt to escape taking responsibility for their evil deeds. Oh, they may be able to vanish into the fabric of America, but eventually, even the best of them turn up every once and a while.

They can’t help themselves. With all the agreements to honor the new people in their new lives, and their own oaths to themselves to keep their previous identity a secret (after all, this time, they’re dead, right?) they still front themselves off to the amazement of all the onlookers.

And when they do, all the co-conspirators who participated in the fake death and/or coverup are left to look like fools and idiots.

Is it illegal to fake your own death?

No, it is not. But it is likely that you and those who assist you in the staging of your faked death can commit crimes in the act of the faking of your death, the process of the cover-up, and/or any fraud or crimes that are committed following the death announcement.

Some of these faux dead people are so clever they accommodate their transition from one identity to another accompanied by a convincing death certificate, and even a body (which can be cremated expediently). LOL.

Mentally ill individuals will disappear from one life, possibly even leaving behind a body decomposed enough to throw off any suspicions only to reappear many years later in Florida, having lived a completely new life, while others disappear and reappear as easily as Invisible Dick.

Other criminals and con men continue to commit all kinds of crimes across the United States from Florida, California, Texas, and Nevada long after they’ve been declared or appear to be dead.

Some of these people who stage their own deaths conjure up a body, while others simply vanish without a trace leaving behind family and loved ones who petition for the coveted certificate of death to offer some form of closure to the disappearance of their loved one or to aid and assist in the person’s disappearance.

Others appear to disappear due to some traumatic event or brain injury where they actually have a break with their former selves and following a bout of amnesia develop a new life based on their being unaware or cognizant of any former life, only to be discovered years after living a new life under their new identity for years.

Though many of these individuals do remain undiscovered for many years, they do finally turn up and the mysteries of their disappearance or faked deaths are revealed.

In this present day, even with the best efforts to hide your IP address, you leave behind a digital footprint wherever you go, and this has led to the unraveling of many a clever psychopath who would have rather remained “dead.”

So, in some cases, “Dead is dead,” is not the case at all.

Nonetheless, in most cases, the truth is revealed.

Crime Victim Recovery

Realizing that you have been victimized in some way by crime can have a devastating effect on one’s life. One can become a victim of crime in many different ways. Some examples of the types of crime victims that can be overcome include:

Adolescent Victims of Abuse

This could be a young, underage person who has been physically or emotionally victimized either by another adolescent or adult and may include molestation, or physical abuse resulting in injuries, like, bruising, broken bones or other maladies. This could be an immediate issue, or one that has continued to cause suffering through adulthood.

Adult Physical or Emotional Assault or Abuse

Again the spectrum covers the widest range of forms of assault or abuse. Assault or abuse can include everything from psychological manipulation or mind-control techniques to physical threat of violence or the use (real or implied) of a deadly weapon.

Gang Violence

The obvious negative effect of gangs on or society is the victimizations of others who may or may not be actively involved in the gang environment; and may include all forms of crime, violence and/or victimization.

Random Act of Violence

Occasionally victims of violence are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when a violent act occurs. This is the most difficult type of violence to rationalize, due to its randomness. Acts of terrorism may result in violence that may be experienced as random.

Sexual Assault/Abuse

Obviously these crimes are sexual in nature but also cover a wide breadth of possible assaultive or inappropriate methods that can have an emotional impact on the victim. This category includes sexual harassment, inappropriate touching, rape, incest, exhibition or pornography without consent.

DUI or DWI Victim

These victims have special needs because there may be no logical rationalization for the victimization except for maybe being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unlike a random act of violence, there is a definitive underlying cause of either driving under the influence or driving while intoxicated while piloting a 3,000 pound weapon. Victim may also include the driver operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs, presenting a completely different set of emotional issues.

Human Trafficking

You might be surprised to know that human trafficking is alive and well in the USA. Often we associate human trafficking as something that only happens elsewhere.

Property Loss, Robbery, Theft, White-collar Crime

This is the most annoying type of crime for our judicial system… After all, “How would you feel if someone took something from you?” Of course the perpetrator wouldn’t like, it… but their answer is simply to re-steal it from someone else. Many thieves are psychopaths or sociopaths who have no conscious or regard for others; no social boundaries.

Usually these crimes are less violent and involve deception and manipulation to facilitate loss or injury but may have a violent influence by integrating a threat of violence (or presence of deadly weapon) in the con. May include identity theft, embezzlement or fraud whereby the perpetrator gains unfairly at the expense of the victim or arson.

Stalking

Stalking includes any unwanted contact between two persons and can occur at home, at work, or now even online. Thankfully, our judicial system has supported an effort to curtail stalking and has initiated laws to protect you from stalking and cyber-stalking.

Vulnerable Adults

Some adults, who are advanced in age or may have a physical or mental dysfunction or disability, may be more susceptible to becoming a victim of any crime. Realizing this, our government has passed new laws that offer protection and more severe penalties for defending the rights of vulnerable adults.

Elder abuse and fraud falls under this category also.

Homicide Survivors

Friends, relatives and loved-ones of murder victims often suffer emotionally and the grief from underlying unresolved issues can be debilitating.

This brief list is not by any means complete, but gives you the idea of the types of crime victims that can be overcome to stop the victimization, cessation of continued pain and discomfort and moving on victoriously in a positive manner.

Victims of crime can suffer from a variety of physical and emotional pain. Examples of issues of victims commonly addressed I have encountered with clients include:

Loss of sense of security and/or fearfulness
Ruminating or the re-playing of the event or circumstances ad nauseam
Haunted by dreams, nightmares or sleep depravation
Social withdrawal or detachment
Internalization, guilt or self-blame
Memory of concentration dysfunction
Poor self-image, helplessness
Bleak future outlook
Lack of trust

Know that you are not alone. There are specialists experienced in dealing with victims who struggle with these symptoms of crime victimization, and are well-equipped to help you deal with these and many other issues that you might be struggling with.

Review your recovery options and put you back in control of your life.