If someone claiming to be a relative asks you to wire money for an emergency, be suspicious. Scammers have already bilked ‘grandparents’ for more than $3.5 million.
Dear ‘To Her Credit’:
I just got a call from someone claiming to be my granddaughter. She said she was in Montreal and had been in a car accident. She said her credit card wasn’t working in Canada. She asked me if I could send her $4,000 by Western Union so she could get her car fixed and get home. She promised to pay it back as soon as she could.
I asked her where her husband was, and she said he didn’t go with her. She didn’t want to tell him she’d been in an accident. When I asked if her parents knew about it, she said she didn’t want to tell them yet either.
I said I didn’t have $4,000 but could send her $1,000. She said that would be OK.
When I went to Wal-Mart to send the money, the clerk got suspicious when she found out I was wiring money to Montreal. She said Montreal has a reputation for fraud, and she asked if I was absolutely sure it was my granddaughter who had called. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure at first which granddaughter it was, and she didn’t volunteer her name. But I was embarrassed to ask my own granddaughter who she was.
So I came home without sending the money, and now I don’t know what to do. If it’s my granddaughter, I can’t leave her stranded in Montreal. After all, I promised the money.
If it’s not her, I sure don’t have that kind of money to send to crooks. What should I do? I have the phone number where she is waiting for the money. — Martha
Read the editor’s response to Martha, and other relevant articles here.
This article was posted to MSN Money on Nov 30, 2009.
An exerpt from: “It Makes You Want to Cry: Economy Hits Seniors Hard”
By Carl Bloice
Article first published by The Black Commentator and then by L.A. Progressive
He caught me by the elevator. “Do you know how much peanut butter costs at Safeway now as compared to two months ago?” John asked. I didn’t but I had been aware of the recent cost of berries, which were rising out of sight.
Joe wanted to know if I had, as requested, written to one of our U.S. senators about the problem. He told me that across the bay in Oakland, a senior meals program had been eliminated entirely as of this month. What brought this exchange on was a July 1 Associated Press article on the effects of rising food and fuel prices and budgetary cutbacks on older people. John and I belong to the same local senior activist group and I had emailed the story to members of the board. That’s the story quoting a woman on Social Security and her difficulty meeting the rising cost of food and utilities who said, “A lot of times I can’t even get into the kitchen.”
“Those same costs are squeezing the estimated 20,000 senior nutrition programs across the country that serve Jones and millions of elderly and frail Americans” the AP story read. “While most needs are still being met, advocates from California to New York worry that seniors will go hungry. They blame a nearly 20 percent increase in fuel and food prices over the past year, flat or reduced government funding, and an ailing economy that yields fewer donations.”
Meanwhile, USA Today has run an extensive series on the problem of seniors struggling to remain alive and healthy under the crushing weight of the cost of the things we need and for which the elderly must pay a disproportionate share of our incomes on. One of them described a busy food bank in Southern California. “The free food amounts to a lifeline for these seniors, who have seen inflation wring much of the value out of their fixed incomes,” it read. “For these retirees, the prices of essentials – notably, gas and food – have galloped beyond reach. Perhaps most of all, they’re straining under the weight of crushing medical costs.
To read the full article please follow this link.