Recognizing a social security impostor scam

“I don’t know if I want to give you my money.” “Oh, no, who told you that you were giving me your money? You are not going to give your money to anyone, Mr. Johnson. If you have that thing

in your mind, please take that out of your mind. No. No one is asking for money from you and you are not paying the money to anyone.” SCAM ALERT: SCAMMERS ARE IMPERSONATING SSA EMPLOYEES He

repeated this a few times, in a few different ways, to reassure me. I asked, “Why can’t I just put the money into a new bank account?”  “Well, Mr. Johnson, if you open a new bank account you

will be linking the same Social Security card number that you have right now, am I correct?” “Yeah, I guess so,” I conceded. “That is the problem.” His instructions: Withdraw $12,000 from

my Chase account immediately and convert it to “government-certified bonds” so I would not lose it to the criminal who stole my Social Security number. What did he mean by

“government-certified bonds”?  “These are prepaid cards that are available in government-certified stores like Apple stores, Walmart, Target, CVS, Walgreens. These are government-certified

stores, I believe you know that, right?” At this point, I’m starting to get mad: How many thousands of older people had he and guys like him persuaded to take out their life savings and buy

prepaid debit cards? But I stayed with it. He reassured me again that I was supposed to hold onto those cards until they issued a new Social Security card. I asked Shaw, “Do I give you the

‘government-certified bonds’?” “No. You hang onto the bonds. That is my whole point. They will never leave your possession and so you have nothing to worry about. If they never leave your

hands, then you cannot ever lose that money, am I right, Mr. Johnson? In fact, it is protected. After you convert the cash to government-certified bonds, two representatives from Social 

Security will come to your doorstep in 48 hours to hand-deliver your new Social Security card. Then you can open new accounts and redeposit the bonds into your bank account.” Okay — well,

that is persuasive. But then came the bomb: “Now, once you get the government-certified bonds, you just have to provide us the serial numbers so we can make sure we can update that on your

file.” And that’s how they steal your money, ladies  and  gentlemen. With the serial number, they are free to withdraw the money and disappear. This is the point where I changed personas

from Carl Johnson, easy target, to Doug Shadel, fraud fighter. “Doesn’t that give you access to all the money that is on those cards?” He  of course  lied in response. “No! We are not going

to need to access the funds. We just need the serial numbers to update your files. Those are yours and they are safeguarded. The whole point of putting the money on those government-issued

bonds is to safeguard them, so no, nothing will happen to the money. You have my word on that, Mr. Johnson.” Angry, but with all my questions answered, I simply ended the call. EPILOGUE Mr.

Shaw called me back more than a dozen times, but I didn’t answer. When the goal is over $80,000 in potential cash, expert crooks like Mr. Shaw will say anything to win you over. I didn’t

need to hear any more.