Shoulder-surfers and pseudo-cops in Sweden

A shoulder-surfer in Stockholm gets seniors' PIN, then steals their ATM card.
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.
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
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?

© Copyright 2008-2009 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

Social engineering—is it time to curtail trust?

Judy Stevens, who has more than 270 identities.
Judy Stevens, who has more than 270 identities.

A couple of scumbags have been casing neighborhoods in Las Vegas, preying on elders. They chat up residents, pretending to be a former resident or a relative of a neighbor. They ask questions and gather information. When they’ve learned enough about someone elderly on the street, they approach the senior armed with facts and trivia—enough to garner the senior’s confidence. In every case, the bottom line is that they need money. The money’s not for them, of course; it’s for one of the neighbors, who is in a costly (fictitious) emergency situation, something medical, or maybe legal. The two solicitors are merely good samaritans.

Rick Shawn, who has more than 1,000 identities.
Rick Shawn, who has more than 1,000 identities.

Classic social engineering. This pair of con artists has bilked 19 known victims in Las Vegas, all over age 73, out of tens of thousands of dollars. It’s likely that they’re connected to similar incidents in Arizona and California; it’s probable that many other victims exist, unaware they’ve been scammed, or embarrassed to come forward.

It sounds like a couple on a crime spree, but it’s much more than that. From our intensive workshop with NABI, we know that this is organized crime. Assistant district attorney Scott Mitchell called them gypsies. Most likely, they are members of one of the families called Travelers. These families move from town to town as they pull their scams, often on the elderly. They have a large repertoire, including sweetheart swindles, pigeon drops, fake lotto schemes, and home repair. Many of these are combined with plain old burglary.

The Travelers are organized crime families. So organized, that when they find a particularly gullible victim, they pass his info to the next family members scheduled to roll through that town. Then, even if the victim realizes that the roof repair or driveway resurfacing job was shoddy, he won’t recognize the brother or cousin who offers to paint the house with leftover paint from a job down the street, or the sister collecting funds for the sick man a few houses down.

'My dog is accused of eating neighbours chicken Plyz help with bail.' Don't be tempted.
'My dog is accused of eating neighbours chicken Plyz help with bail.' Don't be tempted.

These fraudsters go to extremes in order to impersonate a good samaritan. Through social engineering, they manipulate their victims with a realistic story, bamboozle them with bullshit, dupe them, and exploit them. It always ends one way: the victims’ money in the Travelers’ hands. The two pictured above go so far as to drive their victims to their banks or ATMs.

These two have been arrested and are being held, as of this moment, at Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas. Travelers are known to have lawyers on retainer and bail money at the ready. Although the two are considered flight risks, they may bail out on the condition that they wear GPS ankle devices.

Actually, that’s not likely. I just spoke with Lieutenant Bob Sebby, Las Vegas Metro, who said that 15 additional victims have been confirmed. Metro is asking other victims to come forward.

bv-long

Call the bunco squad

Bob Arno with Greg Ovanessian (SFPD), a NABI Director, left, and Jon Grow, Executive Director, right.
Bob Arno with Greg Ovanessian (SFPD), a NABI Director, left, and Jon Grow, Executive Director, right.
Bob Arno with Greg Ovanessian (SFPD), a NABI Director, left, and Jon Grow, Executive Director, right.

In Orlando, Bob and I attended a four-day NABI training seminar–that’s the National Association of Bunco Investigators. Don’t you love the word bunco? More on that later.

NABI members, mostly law enforcement officers, want to squelch organized crime families whose favored targets are seniors. The gangs do home repair scams, sweetheart swindles, fortune telling, home invasion burglaries, and many, many other crimes. They’re perpetrated by self-proclaimed “Travelers,” large families who make these crimes their business, know the system inside-out, and usually manage to avoid prosecution. They live largely off the grid and outside of our system, under numerous aliases, and move from city to city, state to state.

Unfortunately and all too frequently, neither victims, officers, prosecutors, nor judges see these individual complaints for what they are: massive, ongoing, organized crime. Property crimes are easily swept aside to make time for violent crime. The perps, many of whom are functionally illiterate, are wily, slippery, and even seem to enjoy the chase as a game. When arrested, they’ll often pay restitution in exchange for having charges dropped. They employ their own legal experts to get them released. They’ll pay enormous bonds and abscond–it’s just a cost of doing business. And they’ll do everything possible to avoid positive identification of their true identity and where they may be wanted. The end result is an unrecognized criminal population on the loose, free to carry out their scams and frauds perpetually.

NABI’s raison d’etre is information-sharing. And they mean enthusiastic information-sharing with whatever agency needs it–a unique attitude in the world of law enforcement, where competitive, anal-retentive agents and officers hoard every tad, shred, and iota in hopes of bagging credit for the big score. NABI maintains a database of these specific organized crime family members, complete with color photos, FBI file numbers, descriptions of crimes, relationships to other suspects, and who knows more about them. Many arrests and prosecutions are thanks to NABI’s network.

Seniors are the favored victims of these fraudsters. With our population aging rapidly and life expectancy growing, the pool of potential victims is expanding. It includes us! The same attributes that make seniors good victims from the criminals’ perspective (poor vision, mobility, hearing, memory), make them poor victims from a prosecution perspective.

Bring on the bunco squad! Do you even know the word bunco? It’s not much in use these days, even among cops. The word is about as old NABI’s founders, who are still active in the association. To me, bunco connotes tricky, clever, complicated, convoluted, non-violent con. The bunco squad in my mind, before getting to know NABI, was comical and cartoonish. The victims, I thought, were motivated by greed. This couldn’t be further from reality. Crimes can be as simple and innocent-seeming as this one.

The Bunco Investigators toss around the idea of updating their association name to something that reflects their objective in today’s terms. National Association Against Elder Crime? A name like that might work better today, but it would be sad to lose bunco. We might lose the word entirely, without NABI to keep it alive.

Regardless, their mission remains unchanged. They’re a passionate and dedicated group of individuals, all giving their time in order to help eradicate these crime families. In my experience of working with police officers around the world, I most often sense a protective culture of silence, a preference to withhold information rather than to share it with other agencies. NABI is just the opposite.
©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent