I had a great relationship with my late wife's grandfather (who incidentally was in the army meteorology corp with Charlie Munger in WW2).
When our first was born, he came by to hold him. He was acting a bit cold and distant. As he was leaving he said we should grab lunch sometime and "Have a little talk."
I cheerfully said "Sure! About what?" This seemed to infuriate him. He sputtered "About your little incident in San Diago."
"San Diego? I haven't been there in years. Wait...what incident?"
He got more angry. "San-ti-AH-go. Chile! And you needing $2,000 to get out of jail for a DUI while my granddaughter was here pregnant and alone!"
"Grandpa, I've never been to Chile. I've been here the whole time. I think you may have been scammed."
His fury waned a bit. "You didn't...go to Chile?"
No.
He paused a few moments, considering. Then smiled and exclaimed "Oh well that is just such a relief, Chrisman!"
Apparently the scammers duped my FB account, befriended him, and reached out with a story and instructions to send money via Western Union. Pretty clever. Would work even better nowadays with AI voice cloning.
👹White Devil 👹 (@geauxbluse)
One time an old man wanted a cashier's check for $5000. The teller brought him to my desk, and I asked him what the money as for. I noticed he only had around $6k in his savings account, and not much in his checking.
"I won Publishers Clearinghouse, and I need to send them this money to claim the prize."
He pulled the letter he received out of his pocket and showed it to me. The print was crooked, had misspellings, and looked like it was photocopied.
"Sir," I said, "this is not a legitimate letter. This is a scam. I highly suggest that you do not send these people your money."
"Its not a scam," he replied. "I want that check now."
I pulled up the Publishers Clearinghouse website and showed him where it said "we will never ask you to send us money to claim a prize."
I showed him how the letter was asking him to send money to an apartment in New York, not some PO Box. He refused to believe it.
I went got the branch manager to speak with him. He got aggravated, looked me in the eye and said "Young man, you give me my money right now."
Not much else I could do at that point. We cut the check and he went on his way.
I contacted our security department and let them know what happened, just in case things went sideways.
The kicker is months later that same old bastard came into the branch and yelled at me for not stopping him from sending those people his money. I guess he never got that prize.
— https://nitter.net/geauxbluse/status/2059272027601510666#m