If you’re reading this you’re not likely to be the victim of a telephone scammer or mail scraper. A scammer is an out and out swindler; I use the term scraper to mean someone who may use your own assumptions to get your attention; this could be a piece of mail that looks official to a careless reader.

While you may be too smart for some dishonest practices, even smart people get taken and the odds are you know someone, or perhaps several people, who very vulnerable. You can do the community a great service by warning them about these issues. The vulnerable are typically the elderly, the less educated, those living alone, the poor, and recent immigrants, especially those with limited English skills.

Rules 1 and 2 – the only rules you really need to know: never give any personal information over the phone or in response to a letter or email no matter how dire the request, and never send or even deposit any money without talking to a trusted long-time advisor.

Your friends or relatives are not in jail or stranded in a foreign country and if they were they would not be calling you; tell them to call the U.S. Embassy that is the fastest way to get help if they are locked up or broke, then hang up.  When they call back do not pick it up.

That envelope without a return address a big red stripe does not come from the government; it’s just an ad. The government does not send letters with red stripes. Don’t get confused by programs that sound or look official, but are nothing but unsolicited junk mail. Don’t open them unless you know who sent them or asked for the information. Oh, some say, “Here is the information you requested” – they are usually fakes too. 

The number shown on your telephone caller ID is often a phony if it comes from a scammer. This is called spoofing and the recorded voice that  starts with, “the state says” is just a violating the law if you are in the Federal do not call list. Do not call them back you may end up with hundreds of dollars in telephone bills.

Since there is little or no money in enforcement and the victims have little political power, the state and federal governments have done very little to effectively get rid of this activity much of which is blatantly criminal.  Here is an idea, keep your state and federal representative’s number near the phone and every time you get a scam call, call their office give your name and address and politely say that you have had another call in violation of the law; perhaps that will get their attention.