Word: callers
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Heidi S. Towne '98. Who is now a student supervisor for the HLS phonathon, said she also enjoyed her conversations when she was a caller...
...abuses that would make Big Brother blush. She talks about how two years ago, a convicted child rapist working as a technician in a Boston hospital riffled through 1,000 computerized records looking for potential victims (and was caught when the father of a nine-year-old girl used caller ID to trace the call back to the hospital). How a banker on Maryland's state health commission pulled up a list of cancer patients, cross-checked it against the names of his bank's customers and revoked the loans of the matches. How Sara Lee bakeries planned to collaborate...
They are also usually home at midday and available to take calls from phony telemarketers, far and away the biggest class of crooks preying on the old. Downs' first caller identified himself as Curt and spoke in the sympathetic tones that often win the trust of a senior. He commiserated with Downs over her troubles and then told her that her luck was changing: she had just won a prize worth tens of thousands of dollars. But to collect it, said Curt, she first had to buy something from a company called Professional Marketing Inc. in Las Vegas...
...telemarketers rarely call victims in their own state. Calling across state lines or from Canada helps them elude prosecution because caller and victim are in different jurisdictions. In the bigger boiler rooms, jobs are specialized. "Fronters" make the initial call, working from lists of entrants into legitimate prize contests or from obituaries, or sometimes just looking through phone books for "elderly-sounding" names like Viola or Henrietta. The Sun City phone book is a scam artist's bible because it lists hometowns and former occupations of seniors. "Closers" make follow-up calls to likely marks; "reload men" make them...
...they can avoid being conned. Most of the advice seems rather elementary: Don't deal with anyone who demands that a certified check be put in the mail immediately; insist that dubious propositions be put in writing; above all, just hang up on an overly unctuous phone caller. For those who cannot bring themselves to be so rude, Somers has a softer tip: Ask the caller to hold on because someone is ringing the doorbell--and then walk away for a good long time...