Healthcare Hullabaloo: Drop Dead, Fred

Well, it seems that I have some company on this whole Fast Fred Freddie thing. A lot of company.

A good friend of mine advertised his son’s car on Craig’s List, and was contacted by a woman in ‘England’ who wanted to but the car – sight unseen. She wanted to pay by ‘cashier’s check’. Yeah, right. For those of you who don’t know, Freddie and his pals have become quite adept at faking cashiers checks. Of course, the checks are always for more then the asking price, and they want you to wire them the difference. From this point forward, the scheme plays out a lot like Freddie tried to play me.

Another guy I know was contacted by a ’bank manager’ who claimed he had a $10.5 million overage at his bank, and he needed his my account and SS# so that he can share 30% of the money with him.

If this wasn’t so laughable, it would be upsetting.

But, what can we do to stop all of this? Well, for you and me, all we can do is not be stupid enough to fall for these scams. However, there is something that should be done to help capture and deal with these coon artists.

You see, Freddie and his pals almost always use Western Union or Money Gram in their schemes. When you send money using one of these services, all the recipient needs is the receipt number to claim the money. That’s why Freddie claimed he was from England, when he really was somewhere in Africa or maybe Eastern Europe – it really doesn’t matter where you think you wired the money to – Freddie can claim it anywhere in the world where there is a Western Union or MoneyGram office.

So the solution is simple – Western Union and Money Gram should have a fraud department where you can report these scammers. Once a scammer has been identified, they could give you a fake receipt number. Then, when someone shows up at a Western union office with that fake receipt number, instead of getting money, they would be arrested.

Sounds simple enough – so why isn’t anyone doing this?

Probably because it would be bad for business.

When Western Union transfers money to a scammer, they still make money on the transacrion. Only the person being scammed loses money.

So for now, the only to fight the scammers is not to be stupid. For most of us, this shouldn’t be a problem.