Zach's father lost $3,000 in Target gift cards to a scammer posing as a federal agent who claimed his Social Security number was tied to cocaine smuggling. The caller used spoofed numbers and authentic-sounding badge numbers to create authority. In 2019 alone, 400,000 Americans lost $70 million to imposter phone scams.
His ID had been linked to a number of other crimes. Within a few minutes of the phone call, he was kind of just paralyzed with fear.
Zach, welcome back.
Hey, Brad.
This week's story hits really close to home for you. Tell me a little bit about where you found it, what happened, and what you have for us on Sunday.
Yeah, so last Monday, uh, my, my dad got a call from someone claiming to be a federal agent. They said that his Social Security card had been linked to an abandoned car that was found somewhere near the border of Texas. There are 22 pounds of cocaine in the car, blood, and his ID had been linked to a number of other crimes. And within a few minutes of the phone call, he was kind of just paralyzed with fear. And at that point, like, any kind of rational thought just goes out the window. And he was on the phone with this person for a number of hours and in the end ended up getting scammed for around $3,000. In gift cards from Target. So all of last week I was on the phone with, with the FTC, Target corporate, other government agencies, and local authorities just trying to piece together how these scams work and getting a little bit into the psychology of why we fall for them too.
So your dad is intelligent guy, spent many years as a teacher, has his wits about him, obviously, his faculties about him. And what do you think made him fall victim in this case?
It's a great question. I mean, the FTC told me yesterday that in 2019 there was something like 160,000 $70 million worth of these scams. 400,000 Americans fell for these so-called imposter scams over the phone last year. And I think what they do is, you know, they start the call very authoritatively. These are not amateur scammers. They're, you know, they're very skilled, Con Men, and they use tiny little details like they'll give you the badge number, their exact badge numbers that are based on, you know, what badge numbers would actually look like in certain government agencies. They even gave them like a callback number that was— it was mirrored to look like a legitimate government phone number. So they throw in all these little details through throughout the call to really convince you that you're the target of a government-led investigation. And then you get to this weird point where you're walking into a Target and buying gift cards, which to any outsider like you or me who's not a part of this scam, it's just like, at that point, what are you doing? You know, it's— no one buys— no government official asks you to buy gift cards, but at that point you're so paralyzed with fear and in some kind of hypnosis almost that you just can't really pull yourself to reason.
So this is a really sad tale about what happened to your dad. I'm really sorry to hear this. This story is in the hands of a great storyteller. I look forward to seeing what you do with it. Hopefully it'll do a lot of people some good. So make sure you guys open the story on Sunday. Thanks for joining us, Zach.
