Here’s another modern fraud tale in short, which struck me as the flip side of the story in my last post – upside from using the Internet to fight “analog” crime..
A clean cut kid shows up at my front door raising, money for his sports team, which “you might have read in the papers, won a trip to the UK”. He’s dropping all kinds of info provided to put me at ease, like “my dad is calling everyone to make sure I was polite” (he’s so polite he has to be acting), “the neighbors have really been generous…” and “I live over there on Q street, my dad is Docter (mumble), and he’s making me embarrass myself to the neighbors for my soccer club…”
I had heard a similar tune once before, was wary and just decided to say no. He left peacefully. I wish I had asked to see his drivers license.
Then, I traded emails with the coach of the main local traveling soccer team (quickly found on the league website) and he had never heard of a DC area team with this name, and doesn’t know of any local traveling soccer programs other than his… I also google the team name, traveling soccer DC, trip to UK and anything related – no sign of any local news coverage of his team “the Strikers” winning a trip to the UK.
SO I decided this was indeed, probably, a fraud and I posted a gentle warning (because, hey, he could still be a neighbor’s kid) on the Georgetown, DC local community Yahoo group, which has several hundred active readers.
Wouldn’t you know it, a bunch of people came back with thank yous and I saw that kid, fell for it last year (or thought it sounded fishy) and here’s another one that’s going on. A regular online local crimewatch erupted, which has to reduce the kid’s take and maybe will lead to someone catching him. It takes at least a village, plus some cops I expect.
I conclude that as much as the Internet is a haven for online pirates, it’s also a pretty effective info sharing and alert system. I hope this means that on a good day, the analog bad guys will have to work just a little bit harder than they did before the world got all flat and connected…
