Barely five minutes after hitting the streets of Bangkok, a jolly, friendly fellow approached. Conservative and 50ish, the short man put himself head-on into our path and opened with a warm greeting and big smile.
“Hello! First time in Bangkok?”
“Hi, nope.”
“Oh, I am teacher!” The man gestured vaguely as if his school were right around the corner. “Where are you from?”
“Sweden,” Bob replied.
“Oh, guess where I go on Monday—AmsterDAM! And guess why—honeyMOON!” He put his palms together and gave a little bow.
“Congratulations!” Bob and I said.
“Where you go now?”
“MBK market.”
His face falls. “Oh, I’m sorry, it is closed today. Holiday!”
“Well, we’ll just walk around then. Goodbye!”
Short and sweet. He didn’t persist, like most of his ilk. But the man was a scammer of the gentlest kind. MBK market, a huge mall not far from our encounter, was certainly not closed, and neither was it a holiday. The man simply wanted to reroute our day. He wanted to take us to a tailor, a gem shop, or a souvenir shop he knows of (his “brother’s,” of course), where he’d collect a little commission just for bringing us.
A jackfruit seller in Bangkok wrestles open the huge fruit, then laboriously picks out and trims the delicious yellow part.
While this is a fairly harmless scam, it can lead to serious disappointment. I heard about several visitors who were detoured from their intended destinations by their taxi drivers, thereby losing perhaps their only opportunity to visit the Grand Palace, or the floating market, or wherever they were headed.
Sound naive? To quote myself:
Cynicism is an unnatural state for a traveler who has come far to experience a new land and unfamiliar customs. We’re prepared to accept our local hosts, however alien or exotic they seem to us. After all, it’s their country. We want to like them. Yet, we don’t know how to read these foreigners, even though they may seem just like us. We can’t always interpret their body language, their facial expressions, their gestures. We’re at a distinct disadvantage as tourists and travelers, due to our nature as much as our innocence.
I’ve heard of this tout scam being reversed to the visitor’s advantage. Let a taxi or tuk-tuk driver take you to three shops and collect his commissions. In exchange, the driver should be at your service for the rest of the day.
Ms. Shopper’s in the store when her kid has to pee. While she’s helping the little one, her purse is stolen from the store restroom. She put it on the floor, hung it from the hook, left it on the stroller, whatever. Now it’s gone. She reports it to the store manager and goes home, distraught.
At home she gets a phone call. It’s the store. They’ve got her purse. She packs the little one into the car and drives back to the store with relief and apprehension. What will be missing from her bag?
Dragging the kid, she marches into the store, finds a manager, and expresses her gratitude, relief, and apprehension, all at once.
“We didn’t find it,” the manager says.
“But you phoned!”
“We didn’t.”
Ms. Shopper goes home, rattled.
Yep. Her house has been burglarized.
If you read this blog, you’re probably already security-conscious. But this reminder is worth repeating. Don’t trust anyone.
Sorry.
It’s a shame that’s what the world has come to. Even the good samaritan has to be looked at sideways.
Scammers are now blasting entire towns, phone number by phone number, telling residents that their debit card has been restricted. They target customers of a specific local bank or credit union, name it, and give the customer an 800 number to call in order to correct the situation. If you have a debit card from that financial institution, you just might believe it. Well, other people are believing it. After all, their caller-ID proves that it really is the bank calling.
Or does it? The scammers are able to “spoof” the phone number, so it only appears to be the bank calling. You have no inkling that you’ve been targeted by overseas phishers. If you aren’t a customer of that bank, you probably just hang up and forget it.
If you follow the scammers’ instructions, you’ll give them your card number, pin, and all the other juicy data they need to rack up the charges.
So the tired old reminder worth repeating is this: If you suspect a problem with your bank account or debit card, etc., call your bank’s main number. Call the number on the back of your card or on your bank statement. Especially don’t call a number given to you by the bearer of the news.
Don’t give your credit card details if “the front desk” seems to be calling you in your hotel room. It’s a scam!
Heads up, travelers. Beware the clever new scam happening in hotels now.
In order to thwart it, proactive properties are placing notes like this one into guest rooms:
Dear Guest:
Lately, scam artists are attempting to secure credit card numbers from guests in hotels. They’re calling guest rooms at random and claiming to be hotel employees needing to verify credit card information. For your own protection, please do not give your credit card number over the telephone while staying in the hotel. …
Hotel phone scam
My regular readers know that I stay in hotels more than 200 nights a year, and I research scams and cons. Yet, even I could very easily have fallen for this perfectly believable trick. It falls into the “pretexting” and “social engineering” categories. I got a chill reading this hotel management’s note, having just received a similar phone call in a different hotel a few days before. It took me a moment to recall that the request was for my frequent stay account number, not my credit card. Whew!
I’ve confirmed this ruse’s widespread existence with police and hotel security chiefs in several countries. Although aware of the ploy, not all properties believe in taking a proactive approach. As always, it’s up to us travelers to look after ourselves.
“Somehow they get the guest’s name, call the room, and explain that they are from either room service or the front desk and need the credit card number again,” the security director of a major hotel group told me.
“We never connect calls if the person calling can’t say the name of the guest he/she is looking for,” said the security manager of another hotel chain.
But a phone-pharming data-miner can sequentially call every room in a hotel once he knows the phone number convention. Most of us, as generally trusting (and/or oblivious) humans, will miss the fact that the data-miner on the phone fails to address us by name. If he’s any good, he’ll get “the name on the card” just as easily as he gets every other useful tidbit, and I’d bet he gathers quite a few “profiles.”
Legal-but-dirty, beat-the-system, shady business is being committed by Las Vegas homeowners at the inducement of a real estate agent, as reported by Joel Stein in TIME magazine (8/14/09 issue).
[Real estate agent Brooke] Boemio specializes in short selling, in a particularly Vegas way. Basically, she finds clients who owe more on their house than the house is worth (and that’s about 60% of homeowners in Las Vegas) and sells them a new house similar to the one they’ve been living in at half the price they paid for their old house. Then she tells them to stop paying the mortgage on their old place until the bank becomes so fed up that it’s willing to let the owner sell the house at a huge loss rather than dragging everyone through foreclosure. Since that takes about nine months, many of the owners even rent out their old house in the interim, pocketing a profit.
“It’s greedy. But we’re all doing it. Because why not?” It’s very hard, she says, to suffer as the one honest person in a town of successful con artists.
I have no problem suffering as the one honest person in Vegas and I know many others who’d say the same. Boemio seems to be implying that she has given up honesty and joined the con artists of Las Vegas. In a blog about scams and cons, how can I not report this smelly business allegedly occurring in my own backyard?
First though, I’m wondering why banks extend loans to people who already have a hefty mortgage. How do they qualify? Easy, says a real estate lawyer I consulted. The buyer claims the new house will be owner occupied, while the old one will provide income from rent. While investor loans may be hard to get right now, those for owner-occupied houses are not. The fact that the borrowers can afford to pay their mortgage—they just don’t want to!—and default on the loan, choosing to give their money to another lender on a “better” deal is a question of ethics, not legality. If you’re a person of principle, you might have a hard time walking away from the promise you made to pay back your loan. If you’re a Vegas scumbag, or a con artist, or really, really hurting financially, there’s another option: you can simply skip on the loan. Because, why not?
Ever hear of the Golden Rule, Boemio? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” What a simple way to fix the world.
Anyway, back to scams and cons. While the broker is scamming the system, she’s not committing fraud. The homeowners knowingly and temporarily destroy their own credit for the privilege of upgrading their homes and lowering their financial obligations. But otherwise, only the banks are hurt—and who pities the banks? It seems to be the state of Las Vegas and, actually, the state of the country. Look out for yourself. Get what you can. Screw the other guy.
This is practically the definition of kiasu, the Chinese-Singaporean attitude of “me first.” Bob and I spent much time in Singapore, but never quite got the hang of pushing to the front of the line, taking all the lychees on the buffet in case there were no more later, diving into a train before the departing passengers can get off, etc.
We’ve imported so much from Asia. Now we have kiasu, If you don’t believe in the Golden Rule, get the hang of kiasu. Because, why not?
A tiny skimmer removed from an ATM way back in 2006.
A reader wrote of an ATM experience which, soon after, led to $9,000 in fraudulent withdrawals. He was abroad, but this happens at ATMs everywhere; and so frequently that I think it’s worth posting as a reminder.
As I was using an atm at a money exchange kiosk, I received the cash I wanted but was unable to get my card back. The man in back of me told me I had to enter my pin number again in order to have the card returned. He even reached in front of me and hit some buttons and told me to enter my pin. I did so and after a slight wait, the card came back. The experience was unsettling because I had never heard of entering a pin number a second time to get your card back after a transaction and no one had ever brazenly reached in front of me to assist me at an atm. Since I received my cash and finally my card, I felt everything was fine. But that was the day the mysterious withdrawals began.
I called my bank as soon as I realized there was a problem. The woman I spoke with immediately closed the credit card account linked to my atm card. Within a couple weeks, the bank had deposited the total of the disputed withdrawals into my account.
There are two essential goodies the card fraudster needs: the info on your card and your PIN. Info on the card can be gained in many ways. A snapshot can be taken of it with a cellphone camera, an imprint can be made, or a skimmer can be attached to the ATM itself. Nowadays, skimmers can be tiny and imperceptible. The vital PIN can be easily obtained by the crafty thief’s strategy. The example above is a classic: the false samaritan. The fraudster offers help in order to gain what he needs. Sometimes these “samaritans” even make cellphone calls to helplines, handing the phone to the mark; but the person on the other end of the phone call is the fraudster’s colleague, who pretends to be a bank official.
To protect against these scams, first, don’t use an ATM that looks suspicious in any way. Unfortunately, they usually don’t look suspicious, even if they’ve been tampered with. Second, shield your PIN with your hand as you enter it. A wireless video camera may be mounted to capture the entry of your PIN. The illicit video camera, which is only the size of a sugar cube, might be in front of you, so your body won’t block it. Use your hand. Third, if your card gets stuck, get suspicious! Do NOT accept help from a stranger. Walk away from the card if you must, but do not give up your PIN. And lastly, always suspect the stranger who enters your personal sphere. That’s just not natural. He or she is after something—of yours!
It’s sad that we must suspect a friendly stranger, but a look at identity theft statistics is enough to convince anyone that it’s better to be safe than sorry. Ruthless, creative scammers specialize in benevolence, and they’re darn convincing. CONvincing, as in gaining your CONfidence. That’s why they’re called CON artists!
A shoulder-surfer in Stockholm gets seniors' PIN, then steals their ATM card.
I want to wail even in Sweden, because the country has long been perceived as enjoying a relatively low crime rate. And it did. But not any more.
The day I arrived in Stockholm, the paper featured a spread on thieves lurking at ATMs who preyed on the elderly. The scam stars a shoulder-surfer lying in wait for seniors to come use a cash machine. He watches them enter their PINs, then tricks them into allowing their bank card to be physically stolen in one way or another. The thief may ask to change a ten crown note, or may meet the mark at the parking meter and ask for a small coin. Anything to get the mark’s wallet out.
One wallet, many hands.
Then what? “Magic arts,” one victim said. “Finger magic,” said the police. Hard to believe that a bank card can be stolen from a victim’s wallet right under his nose. Yet, Bob and I recognize the trick we call the “flower gift lift,” as practiced by women in Palma de Mallorca (and I’m sure other places, too). It’s forceful, brazen, devious, and it works. I’ve written about that here.
The Stockholm shoulder-surfer was part of an international gang from Romania. He and one other were sentenced to a few years in prison. Police say they’ve operated all over Sweden, targeting the elderly and handicapped. ATM surveillance photos show victims in wheelchairs and using walkers.
At around the same time. a community newspaper warned of “false policemen” also targeting seniors at ATMs. The thieves convinced the seniors that they needed their bank cards and PINs in order to control illegal withdrawals. Police report additional ploys: door-to-door police impostors warn of burglaries in the neighborhood and want to photograph jewelry and valuables. Whatever the ploy, the thief gets in—cash and valuables go out.
Graph from www.bra.se
As I was writing this, the evening news came on. Seems some scammers are knocking on seniors’ doors to give them tips about H1N1. Rather, one scammer knocks and talks. While the senior is occupied, the other slips in and robs the resident.
Meanwhile, last month, police saw for the first time credit cards being skimmed at gas pumps. “So far police have no suspects and haven’t been able to determine how the skimming operation has been carried out.” I have advised them!
Skimmers have been found attached to ATMs at Ikea and a Stockholm Toys R Us store. There was a home invasion in the sleepy suburb where my family lives.
What has Sweden come to?
In Bangkok, seemingly corrupt police are extorting large sums from foreign visitors. In South Africa, pseudo-cops are stopping drivers and pedestrians, requesting wallets in order to see identification or “search for contraband,” then absconding. In Stockholm, thieves impersonating police lured seniors into give up their PINs at ATMs in the name of “controlling withdrawals.”
This strategy seems to have exploded recently, or at least is being recognized for what it is, or at least making it into the news.
The strategist elite are those who make participants of their victims. Like the Palma claveleras, they’re in your face with a story. Their only goal is to walk away with your wallet. Consummate con artists, they’re the slipperiest, wiliest, and most difficult to detect. Garbed in a counterfeit persona designed to gain your confidence, they lay bait and entrap their prey: usually the unsuspecting traveler.
Fake Police = Pseudo Cops
These strategists concoct ingenious schemes. Who could avoid falling for what happened to Glinda and Greg? They were walking in a foreign park in—well, it could have been anywhere, this is so common—when a gentleman approached them with a camera. He asked if one of them would mind taking his picture, and the three huddled while he showed them how to zoom and where to press. Suddenly two other men arrived and flashed badges. The man with the camera slipped away while the two “officials” demanded to know if the couple had “made any transaction” with him. Had they changed money with him illegally? They would have to search Glinda’s bag; and they did so, without waiting for permission.
“It all happened so fast,” Glinda told me a few days later, “I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t have time to think.” The “officials” absconded with Glinda’s wallet, having taken it right under her nose. In variations on this theme, the pseudo cops take only cash saying it must be examined, and they may even offer a receipt. Needless to say, they never return and the receipt is bogus.
On first impression, the pseudo cops’ scam is believable; their trick requires surprise, efficiency and confusion: they don’t allow time for second thoughts. Theirs is a cheap trick, really. They depend on a fake police shield to gain trust; they can’t be bothered to build confidence with an act. Authority is blinding, and that’s enough if they’re fast. It’s a thin swindle, but it works.
We good citizens are trained from an early age to respect authority. It’s not easy to ask a uniformed policeman for identification, or even a plainclothes officer who flashes a badge. And if we were to request ID, how closely would we scrutinize it? Would we detect a fake? What about identification in a foreign language, Thai for example, or Russian?
What’s the difference, anyway, between a pseudo cop—an impostor—and a legitimate but corrupt official? Both rely on their perceived authority, both act fast (before they’re found out, by the victim or others), both do the shake-down dance in one form or another. We, the good citizens, never see it coming. “It all happened so fast,” one victim told me, “I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t have time to think.” We’re more than victims of crime here. We’re victims of our upbringing, we who are taught to follow rules and obey laws.
Bob and I were accosted by pseudo-cops in Russia. I can tell you, it’s frightening, especially when the scene expands to include additional players. Sydney’s had them, and so has Barcelona. Stockholm’s in the news now with pseudo cops stationed at ATMs frequented by seniors, collecting PIN codes under the guise of “regulation.”
BBC News reports a horrific scam that takes place in the Bangkok airport. A number of travelers browsing the duty-free shops have been accused of shoplifting, put in jail holding cells, and forced into negotiations that amount to police extortion in exchange for their release. They’re being tricked into relying on the advice of a man who seems to be a police accomplice.
One of the victims in this report, Stephen Ingram, was taken by airport security to a police office, put in a cell overnight, then given an interpreter. The interpreter took him (and his travel companion) to a police commander who attempted extortion of over US$12,000 and threatened a prison stay of two months before they’d even get their case heard. After paying a portion of the “bail,” Mr. Ingram and his travel partner were put into a hotel and told not to leave, not to contact a lawyer or their embassy, and cautioned that they were being watched. They eventually escaped and got the their embassy, where they learned they’d been victims of a classic Thai scam called the “zig-zag.”
An Irish woman was subjected to the same scam when she made a small purchase at the duty-free shop. She bought an item of makeup, which the shop clerk put in a bag; a customary practice, right? On leaving the shop she was surrounded by security guards shouting ‘You! You! You go jail six months.” The shopping bag contained an item not paid for. Did she steal it? Did the shop clerk plant it? Did the guards? The woman was held overnight “in filthy conditions,” and eventually had to pay up to free herself and her passport.
In her case, the Irish woman thought she had purchased two items. She paid by credit card but didn’t pay attention to how many hundreds of baht she was charged. Did the shop clerk intentionally charge for only one item, as a set up? Why, otherwise, did security immediately pounce on this customer?
Both of these examples begin with the company called King Power, which runs the airport duty-free shops, and both include collusion by government officials and others. King Power has tried to substantiate some of its accusations with surveillance video, and has three cases “explained” on its website.
In an article in the Irish Daily Mail, Andrew Drummond wrote that in Thailand (where he is based), this is called the “Monopoly scam, ”
not so much because of the high amounts of money involved but the fact that victims…could buy …˜Get out of jail’ cards to escape airport shoplifting charges. These …˜cards’ were letters issued by the local prosecutor and police.
Fake police with false ID at Bangkok airport. How is one to know what's real?
Bangkok airport, it seems, is infested with scammers, corrupt officials, and according to the pictured article, pseudo-cops. There are more horror stories:
Paul Grant and Lynn Ward, both from the UK, separately reported another Bangkok airport scam. In this one, incoming passengers are instructed by a customs officer to put their duty-free items into their checked luggage when they retrieve it from the carousel, and that they should not declare the items, “or they will be prosecuted for smuggling.” When exiting the customs area, other customs agents “discover” the undeclared items, and levy hefty fines or threaten jail. ATMs are conveniently located beside the customs office, or travelers are escorted to machines in order to withdraw the large sums charged.
If you haven’t read this or another warning specifically about the shake-downs in Bangkok’s airport, you haven’t got a chance should you be chosen to be a victim.
The moment Michael Griffith turned his back, his wife let out a bloodcurdling scream. He whipped around to see Nancy jumping up and down, crying, her face contorted with panic and disgust. They were at the immigration desk at Lagos airport with barely an hour left to suffer Nigeria.
Michael now knew for sure he shouldn’t have brought Nancy along on this short business trip. She’d been so warned, so exhorted, so horror-storied, that she was utterly paranoid and never even left the perceived safety of the hotel.
A few days earlier, as Nancy browsed the hotel gift shops, she’d had a brief conversation with another hotel guest.
“I hope you’re not leaving this god-forsaken country on Friday,” he’d told her.
“I don’t know for sure,” Nancy said with alarm. “Why?”
“They steal passports on Fridays,” the man explained. “Goddamned immigration officials at the airport.”
“Why on Fridays?”
“Because they know you’ll pay anything to get your passport back so you can get the hell out of Nigeria without waiting all weekend until Monday.”
When Michael returned to the hotel that evening, Nancy asked him what day they were leaving. Friday, Michael said. So Nancy related her newest tale of terror and, together, she and Michael came up with a plan. Nancy would carry their remaining cash in a flat leather pouch attached to her belt and slid inside her jeans. 100 nairas, the exact amount of departure tax for two, would be put into Michael’s shirt pocket. Nancy would tuck an American $20 bill into each of her two front jeans pockets in case bribes were necessary, and Michael would carry a 20 naira note in each of his two front pants pockets. Never let go of your passport at immigration, they’d been warned. Michael would hold onto their passports during examination and stamping.
Attorney Michael Griffith
As a lawyer who represents Americans arrested abroad, Michael was no novice at foreign travel. He’d been to almost eighty countries, through hundreds of airports. It was his business to know the laws and procedures of other countries, their customs, and dangers. He’d been through the notorious Lagos airport many times before, but never with his tall, blond wife. Nancy, too, had traveled extensively. She had just retired from her career as a supermodel.
Nancy’s jitters came from the endless Nigerian nightmare experiences she’d heard and read about travel through Nigeria. Even the U.S. State Department considers it one of the most dangerous, corrupt, and unpredictable territories on Earth.
Nigerian nightmare
So it was not a pair of travel virgins who meticulously prepared themselves for
the perilous journey through Nigerian formalities. These were travel warriors. From New York. Michael, at least, thought he’d pretty much seen it all.
They approached the immigration desk as planned, Michael in the lead, Nancy dragging their wheely bag. It was not crowded, and they stepped right up to the official’s high desk.
“Airport tax fifty nairas each,” the government official demanded.
Michael reached into his shirt pocket and extracted the prepared cash, five
20-naira notes. As the officer’s fingers closed around the money, Nancy shrieked. She yelled with a shrillness and urgency Michael had never heard before, unlike her wail of frustration on the tennis court, her cry of anger occasionally directed toward him, or her extremely rare explosions of rage. In an instant, a heartbeat, a fraction of a moment, Michael heard intense terror and overpowering repulsion, desperation, and primeval fear. He felt it in the hollow of his chest. In his bones. On his skin.
He spun, already flushed and slick with instant sweat.
Nancy was screaming, but she was also jumping and twitching. And Michael
saw that she was covered with cockroaches.
Covered might be the wrong word. There were only twenty or thirty cockroaches. But they were huge, shiny as glass, and black as terror. They skittered up Nancy’s jeans, down her blouse, and along her bare arms. One had become entangled in her hair, and kicked frantically at her ear. A few dropped onto the floor, where Nancy crushed them as she leapt spasmodically.
A uniformed immigration officer strolled away from the hysteria, indifferent. At his side, he casually swung a large-mouthed jar of grimy glass. It was empty.
Michael, accustomed to extracting people from sticky situations, was at a loss. He’d pulled people out of South American prisons, choreographed an American’s escape from a Turkish jail, rescued the wrongly accused and the clearly guilty. Now, as he grabbed his delirious wife by her shoulders and tried to steady her, he saw the same overwhelmed eyes he saw in many of his clients. They bulged with a desperate plea for a savior, and of unspeakable horrors.
Michael swatted and kicked away most of the creatures. Then he opened the lower buttons of Nancy’s blouse and removed one more. He pulled one from her hair, and then removed the serrated legs that had remained stuck there. He asked her if there were any more. Then he held her.
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered in her ear. “We’re almost home.”
He turned back to the immigration officer, still placid in her high booth.
“You only gave me four twenties,” she said. “I need one more.”
“Lady, I’m from New York,” Michael said dangerously, “and this is the best I’ve ever seen. You know and I know that I gave you a hundred nairas. You’re getting nothing more from me.”
The officer waved them through, expressionless.
Nancy, catatonic with shock, began to regain her composure when they arrived at the gate for their flight.
“If I ever get out of here, I’m going to kiss the ground of America,” she said with conviction.
And she did so, eighteen hours later at JFK airport, though it was technically not ground, but the dusty terrazzo floor thirty feet above it.
A U.S. Customs Officer must have seen Nancy bend to the floor in the busy baggage hall.
“Ma’am, you must be just back from Lagos!” he grinned. “Welcome to the U.S.A.! Welcome home!”
