this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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I know it clearly works, and old people do definitely fall for it, but I'll never understand how. What part of the script makes it sound reasonable that the IRS would want amazon gift cards instead of, you know, a cash transfer or something?
They make it sound like they are only notifying you that you are about to be arrested. They don't ask for payment and fake refuse the first offer if the mark offers. Then, when the madk is very worried they are about to go to jail, it is much easier for them to believe whatever because it's harder to think when you are panicking. So something like "our payment system is down so we cant take payment with cards right now. You need to pay within 30 minutes or I can't reverse it. I guess I can pay out of pocket, but you need to get me the equal amount of gift cards" or some shit like that.
Gullible, scared, lack of critical thinking, blindly following authorities, there are many reasons. It's not only old people, thought.
Don't forget pathological problems like forgetfulness, dementia, and Alzheimer's. Scammers have no qualms with stealing from people with disabilities.
I'm convinced it's because a shit load of old people have committed, and so far gotten away with, serious crimes at some point.
Random calls from "authority" decades later stun locks their brain in a memory loop.
I used to hang out with hippies and artists and the age range is quite large there. There was this dude in his 70s who would casually talk about the time he helped get rid of a body after a murder acquaintances of his did in the 60s or 70s or something. He was actually put on trial and got convicted in the 80s when one the people who did the actual murder couldn't live with the guilt and confessed but managed to get it overturned when he appealed and got acquitted, in part because they never found the body because like 5 years after they disposed of it they put a new highway right over it. Old people are fucking wild lol
Thats equally dark and intriguing. Can you elaborate how you arrived at this conclusion? What serious crimes have you „believably“ heard of so far?
Worked in a call center once connecting terminally Ill old people to nurses (a specialized aska nurse line essentially).
My job was just to call people who needed a call back and then hand them off to a nurse when they answered the phone. I'm talking like 15 seconds of phone time with these people on average.
The shit I heard in those 15 seconds was wild.
"Can't talk, I'm on the other line with Jesus" was one of my favorite dark replies from a person with essentially terminal COPD.
But there were plenty of "I lived a bad life, I know why this is happening to me" type digressions.
Jeez! Thats really something. I would still assume they just didn’t go to church enough and thought this was their reckoning or so. In any case, you have guts my friend. That would have ruined my mental health.
Many real scams are not this obvious, plus a lot of old people are senile to some degree, which these scammers are exploiting. My grandma was contacted by "her bank" about verifying her identity, and after a few minutes of establishing a backstory they asked her for her debit card info including CVV. It all sounded very legit, and they even "transferred her to another department" with hold music and everything. Luckily, she didn't fall for it.
along with other replies generally you become more gullible/less able to think of alternative explanations as you age, so even some "obvious" scams look legit
It's the amount of money that makes it worth it. If they are successfull the amount is usually something like $10,000-$30,000. If they are only successful once every 2000 calls thats still worth it. Now you would say 2000 calls with 50 people in a call center means they are only successful once every few days and you are totally correct. But you have to put this into consideration with what they are usually paid. If you work in IT for huge companies like Accenture or McKinsey you will earn around 8-10k if you are in upper management and 6-8k if you are a normal worker. That's yearly. So every successful scam for these scam companies pays up to 5 peoples yearly salary
Scammers intentionally use typo's to weed out the intelligent people.
They pry on the lowest denominators, since they know they can convince them of anything.