Daren Wilkes doesn’t mind talking to every senior center and civic group that will have him if it will prevent heartbreaking calls to his desk at the Elder Fraud Unit in the Queens District Attorney’s Office.
“My favorite calls are when I ask someone ‘Did you send them any money?’ and they say, ‘No,’” Wilkes said Monday night at the meeting of Community Board 11.
But he told the audience at Bayside High School that all too often the call is from someone who has lost tens of thousands of dollars to professional thieves who use phone and computer scams, home improvement scams and romance scams to steal from their unsuspecting victims without the need of a weapon.
“Verify, verify, verify,” said Wilkes, who heads the unit. “They prey on emotions like fear, panic, romance, greed. They don’t want you to think things over. They want you act quickly.”
He said many scams that are now popular start with texts or emails from people or those perhaps responding to someone on a social media dating site. After a while, Wilkes said, a new friend might bait the trap by chatting about a new car or a recent vacation.
“Then he’ll say, ‘My uncle is good at investments,’” Wilkes said. The victim is encouraged to set up an “account,” which is simply an app controlled by the scammer, and then persuaded to wire small amounts of money to start, perhaps $500 or $1,000.
“Soon, you look at your account and your $1,000 is now $2,000,” Wilkes said.
As more and more money is sent to the account — “You’re just sending money directly to them” — it adds up.
“When you go to withdraw money or you ask questions, he disappears,” Wilkes said.
He said romance scams often involve texts or emails with people who claim to have just moved to a new state, far away from the victim. They then have a problem and can’t ask anyone else for money because they don’t know anyone, having just moved.
“Ask them to FaceTime,” Wilkes recommended. “If they don’t want to do that, they don’t want you to know who they are.”
He said the familiar “Grandparents” scheme is getting more sophisticated as artificial intelligence allows scammers to craft convincing voice and video reproductions.
“You get a call saying ‘I’ve been arrested,’ or someone saying your grandchild has been in an accident and the hospital won’t accept the insurance,” Wilkes said. “Call your family … Verify, verify, verify.”
He also said to not trust “home repair” people who knock on your door unsolicited, saying they can see damage to your home.
“Go to a reputable contractor,” he said. “And don’t ever let them into your home.”
Wilkes encouraged anyone with questions to call his office at (718) 286-6578. Later in the meeting Officer Thomas Corey, community affairs officer at the 111th Precinct, also invited people with questions to call his office or the Crime Prevention unit at (718) 279-5200.
“We’d rather take your call than have you lose $50,000,” Corey said.
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