Can someone with 50 grandchildren even remember all their names?

I remember this from a while back. This is a popular scam in Japan, where family honor works in the scammer's favor. The scammer poses as a wealthy person who threatens to sue the family if they don't wire money to them right away to cover damages.

When I read about it last, they said it was starting to creep up in the US.

Wow, that's low.
And in Canada?

Don't these grandparents call their kids to find out why they aren't helping their own kids? I know in my family, my Grandmother would have called my Mother and guilted her for hours b/c she wouldn't help me. I understand some families don't use guilt as much as mine does, and this is just despicable.

This is so sad. How scummy can someone be to pull this crap?

Everyone should forward this to all their older relations.

This just recently happened to my brother-in-law's paternal grandparents. The scammers called and said "do you know who this is?" Grandmother said "is this xxxx?" "Yes it is. I'm stuck and need help." Since the scammers said my brother-in-law was in an unlikely location, she was smart enough to call his mom to double check.

Fortunately, she did not send any money. But, she was reluctant to call the police about the matter. Maybe she was embarrassed about the matter. I could easily see how she (or anyone else) could fall for this.

In Canada? Why do these things always seem to originate up here?

On the flip side, I don't know whether to forward this to my grandmother or not. I've had to make a phone call or two like this in the past!

@BeeBoo: Maybe if they are named the way George Foreman named his kids. :)

"I'm in trouble, Grandma. I'm up here in Toronto. I need money. I'm in jail."

My first rule with my kids (which I hope they will pass down to their kids someday): if you get arrested, make yourself comfortable... we'll see you in the morning (late morning. Maybe early afternoon. ;)

The wrecked car won't get any more wrecked by the time I get there.

never would work on my grandma, she would just talk them to death, or they would just hang up after thr first hour.

Why not simply impose capital punishment for shysters like this if caught? Nothing like the death penalty to deter wire fraud. Either that, or we should require mandatory military service (immediate overseas deployment upon completion of BT). Is that 4-5000 dollars worth 2 to 4 years of service?

Well, considering i'm in toronto, and broke, and need money, and have an american grandma...

who would never in a million years send me money, ever.

Damn.

@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy-->: I could see situations where they might not. Plus, the idea of the scam is that it's an emergency and they have to act quickly. One would think, though, that before sending a large sum of money, you'd be making sure it was secure.

1 - This is freakin LOW, man. I don't know about you guys but my granny is on a fixed income. I'd go postal if somebody did this to her.

2 - I didn't know Wal-Mart money services stayed open past 10pm (11 during the Holidays) - ANYWHERE.

3 - Can that lady sue the money transfer service because they did not confirm the security question? Ball dropped on their part.

I saw one such incident on a TV news show. Something like this: It was during spring break. The call comes from Mexico and the caller claims they are a friend of who is on spring break, but was injured in an accident and can't speak. So the parent must wire cash immediately so the kid can get the special operation in the special Mexican hospital.
This way they don't even need to impersonate the kid. They just claim the kid is incapacitated in the hospital.

This is a great idea. I would have never thought of it. Thanks Comsumerist!

It's hard to catch con men, it is. That's no reason for people not to try. By the way, boys and girls, when dealing with con men, or a con team, they often work in teams you know, it is always better to OVER react than to under react. Make some noise. Snitch them out, post their pictures online, or on telephone polls. Whatever you can think of... give the next mark a little bit of a trail. Also the next, and the next and the next...

Same thing happened in the movie Criminal, but it was in person. Not a new con. Old people are gullible easy to scam, unfortunately.

it happened here in Lincoln, Nebraska. A grandmother sent almost $18,000 to her "grandson" in Canada and thankfully, the woman's bank stepped in to stop her from sending more $$. Here is the article:

[journalstar.com]

For this sort of crime, we should bring back crucifixion as a criminal punishment.

I was wondering that myself.. mind you it might just be a very small group of people perpetrating all the scams.

They did a story on 20/20 or Dateline a few years ago on this. They said that they used phone books to look up "old people names" like Joyce and Mabel.

@PlanetExpressdelivery: Unfortunately, if the Supreme Court won't allow the death penalty for child rapists, I don't think it would be considered kosher in this case either.

I've got at least 40 cousins on my dad's side of the family, and I can't remember who is who, who has kids, where they live, etc. I imagine it would be easy for a senior citizen to be even more confused.

disgusting. There needs to be a special prison just for these losers. One that closely resembles the different levels of hell.

I heard of a similar scam, basically this guy calls up and says he's from the government and you have to pay $700m right away to save his ailing economy.

I personally think the way we should look to reducing the number of scams is to go through their main channels. As it is now, wiring money is how all this money changes hands. If we kept a record of people accepted the money, and blacklisted those suspected of fraud, we could at least reduce the amount of fraud taking place. Likewise, if companies tracked the usage of stolen credit card users rather than just cutting off the card and writing off the losses, I think we could have at least some impact on fraud.

The government needs to admit this is happening and do something. It doesn't have to just be regulation though. The government could offer rewards for successful convictions, as well as other incentives. As it is now, it seems the only kind of theft the government is interested in stopping is people torrenting music.

Maybe if you went by "Memaw and Pepaw" this wouldn't happen. If anyone called my mom and called her "grandma" she would be instantly tipped off. None of the grandkids has ever called her that.
I think the worst part of the story is when they say to the elderly person "this is your favorite grandchild", and the grandparent actually admits to having one!

Sadly, this happened to the grandfather of a friend of mine just about three weeks. He got scammed for about $5K.

@BeeBoo: My Granny can - including the inlaws and great-grandchildren - but she would tell us to just sit in jail and suffer.

@BeeBoo:
My grandmother is probably at around 30 now between grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I'm sure she couldn't list them in alphabetical order; maybe by order of birth. It's not hard to go through your children and remember who their children are though.

I, on the other hand, might be able to name half of my white trash cousins, I and couldn't name a single one of their kids.

Kids, call your grandparents more often. They're lonely and they miss you.

And you might get some money out of 'em!

My grandma got one of these calls, and she's hard of hearing and thought they said my name!
My parents (who live halfway across the country from me) were a little worried, but they knew I knew better than to ask for money from my grandma who's living off social security.

@juiceboxonfire: Ha! Mabel was my grandmother's name. Some of her friends were Thelma, Dell, Myrtle, and...Mabel.

I'm starting to see some kids named Mabel, though - it was due for a comeback.

@BeeBoo: What, you don't know 50 people and their names?

@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy-->: My 85 year old grandma doesn't have my cell phone number handy and is not quite so sharp anymore (my aunt lives with her but works during the day), so she was really worried when she got one of these scam callers claiming to be me.
Not all grandparents can keep on their toes like that.

@LindsayC: If you're worried about the kid and you believe that it's really them and they're in an emergency situation, you aren't concerned about the cash - just making sure your loved one is okay.

It's kind of how the scam works, actually...

@algal924: Eh, I'm not sure exactly what they said to my grandma when they called, but I know I might say something like that, jokingly. Though, certainly not if I was in trouble.

that's terrible. I would hunt the bastards down myself.

That being said, my grandmother has been around the block a couple of times, co-running my grandfather's business with him when he was alive. This often involved bailing actual employees out of jail when they got in trouble...I don't think she'd be fooled.

And one day, when I have grandkids and I get, like, a cortex-gram beamed in through my skull port from some guy in the Central Pacific Republic claiming to be my grandkid in trouble, I'll tell them I'll call them back in the morning, and go back to sleep.

All your need is one piece of info and ten dollars and you can get all the rest of the info you need. It's ridiculous how easy it is to get the info needed to do something like this. Too bad the government won't do anything about it to fix it or do some bandage job that only gives the illusion of security.

@celestebai: I can't remember all the names of my first cousins once removed. My grandmother had three children and seven grandchildren and maybe sixteen great grandchildren and she was always calling my sister by my mother's name and me by the other grandson's name. Considering she probably has barely seen some of them it might be a little hard for her to keep up with 50 grandchildren.

@BeeBoo: My gran knows all our names, and there's 30 of us, she just can't get the right name out at the right kid. "Matt -- Steve -- James -- that kid over there! Stop that!"

@mugsywwiii: People have used this trick for centuries to convince people they could tell the future or speak to the dead. It works on the average person because it plays on their deepest emotions - grief in the case of John Edwards, or in this case, fear.

@ezacharyk: What about the "It's Me, It's Me." That's also popular. But the one you mentioned scares me more.

@TakingItSeriously: Crimes against old people should be treated as severely as crimes against children.

@brent_r: Canada: Who's too polite NOW?

I always wonder how old people get to be that old and still have any money left if they fall for all the scams people pull on them.

@zibby: Don't need the phone book any more- just look up the ss administrations most popular baby names by decades and focus on first names from the 1930s, 1940s and maybe 1950s now...

I'm pretty sure that this happened to my grandmother a few days ago (no money was scammed though)
She called me on my cell at work to make sure that I was "Ok" because some guy called her house saying something like "Grandma, I'm not doing so well and need your help" before she realized that it wasn't me and hung up