Word: victimizer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Downs was 77 and recently widowed and had just learned she had breast cancer. "I was really at the bottom of the barrel," she says. "I was living in San Antonio, Texas, where I knew no one. I guess I was lonely." Right there is a combination that screams "victim." The American Association of Retired Persons (A.A.R.P.) figures that while anyone 60 or older is likely to be on at least one "mooch" (sucker) list, a woman 75 or older is virtually guaranteed to be. Like Downs, such women are often widows, lonely and suffering from ills that make them...
...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...
Prosecuting the frauds, however, is difficult. Often there are no witnesses to a phone con except the scammer and the victim. The rare con artists who are convicted seldom get sentences anywhere near as long as O'Donnell's 16 years. Far more typical are the prison terms of one to three years imposed on operators of one New York State pyramid scheme. The House in July passed a telemarketing-fraud bill that for the first time sets minimum jail terms for federal convictions. But the minimum will be only six months, or 15 months if the victim is over...
...Perhaps she should have relied more on imagination. A Virginia couple have sued the author, who used to work in the state's chief medical examiner's office, for using private details of their daughter's murder in her 1992 novel All That Remains. Among the alleged similarities: a victim is found with her eyeballs missing and two front teeth beside her. Cornwell's agent had no comment...
Other publications may have plastered Cunanan's terrifying face on their cover, giving him the attention he so obviously desired, but you chose to pay tribute to Versace, a great artist. Thanks for focusing on the victim. BROCK WOJTALEWICZ Custer...