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Comment by grimgrin | Hacker News Reader

similar story for me a year ago. grandpa got a call that i was in jail for hitting a car and the driver was pregnant. lost her baby. they even had “me” talk to them briefly which really got em believing. he went to bank and mailed $9500 in cash, to what ultimately appeared to be an airbnb

was v sad because he felt supreme humiliation over the matter.

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Happened to my uncle, he records all calls so he was able to show us. When they let him speak to "his son" he sounded just like him and even used the same greeting his son normally does with him. Was very creepy. And his real son had his phone turned off during that time.

The really weird bit is they didn't ask him to send any money out. They knew his address and some "police" showed up an hour later demanding he write them a check.

This is in Canada. They've apparently found the guy, but there's some difficulties because he's in a different province.

That sounds so strangely elaborate. I wonder how they fake the voice and why they bother to have a second person come to the house

I'm sorry to hear that. It was almost the exact same thing with my uncle. When I first started asking questions, he tried to assure me it was legit because he had heard his grandson talking in the background. My guess is that they had somebody sobbing hysterically while talking so as to make it hard to recognize that the voice is "off". When you're stressed, it's easy to miss that kind of thing, and they exploit it.

Airbnb must be a hotbed for these sort of things. I had a friend in the 90s who would squat at unfinished or unoccupied homes while he ran fraud scams, renting an Airbnb seems much easier, since these scammers almost certainly rented it with a stolen identity.

A friend?

Lots of people do bad things, most bad people have friends, many of whom are either too naive or too lonely to be picky. He treated me well and taught me a lot about tech in the 90s. It was not easy to find mentors/like minded people (tech, not fraud) where I lived at the time, so the criminal aspect was regrettable. As an adult I look back and am so disappointed that he didn't do something legitimate, he was a top notch sysadmin, and was great with customers (I mean, that's how scams work) - he could have been much more enriched by going legit. He rightfully ended up in prison for about 14 years, maybe more? But yes, a friend.

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