A Sad and Deeply Moral Matter
by Kenneth Bagnell
A line from no less a man than the 5th century playwright Sophocles reminds me of life’s ever more precarious nature. “Rather fail with honor,” Sophocles said, “than succeed by fraud.” Morally speaking he’s obviously right. But the fact is that fraud is on a very rapid rise. The other day I had no less than three phone calls telling me that if I didn’t pay up this or that debt (which I didn’t have in the first place) they’d have me charged, probably arrested in a day or two. For whatever reason I just hung up and the second time hung up again and yet again. Now I wish I’d listened more to the pitch. A good friend of ours — an honorable woman, devout Christian and now a senior — did listen to a similar caller last summer. Given her circumstances, she trusted him. So get ready: she was exploited to the tune of roughly $80,000. In financial terms she’s ruined.
What’s the story? Here are the basics: In August she received a letter on stationary carrying the legitimate name, Publishers Clearing House. It had good news: she was told she’d won four million dollars. The note told her to contact a person named in the letter, and a warning not to divulge the news, since it would nullify her win. Next she was told by a man designated as “her manager” to go to her bank, send a cheque of significant amount needed to pay taxes on her win, both to the Canadian and American government. This was repeated several times. Three weeks later her “manager” was still asking for more to cover this expense or that. In all, despite her frustration, she took out loans to make up the $80,000 demanded. However what’s $80,000 when you’ve just won four million? Yes, four million! Imagine! Her house needed minor repairs but after that, the highway of life would be paved in gold. (By the way even when she reached the $80,000, her “manager” was still asking for more. How odd for such a nice man. Anyway, she mentioned all this to her lawyer, who broke the bad news: she’d been “the victim of fraud”, advised the steps she should take to report it, and to prevent further theft. There never was any four million dollars. Now she was broke. As she told me: “I now have to live solely on my pension cheques and have to pay the loan back with interest.” Obviously she went to the police, ending up with a branch of the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) who, for reasons to come, handle frauds. Other than decent sympathy from the officers, she says nothing has happened.
Many of us thought a decade or two ago, that our social and economic cultures were on the way to higher and ever stronger ethical standards. I did and, about twenty years ago, wrote an essay saying so. I now think I was wrong and the evidence is most obvious in the vast, ever increasing number of frauds. One statistic is almost sufficient: In 2013 Canadians lost a total of $53 million to frauds. In 2014, that number was increased to $70 million. (Obviously chances are it’s much worse since. Moreover, I’ve been reliably advised, less than 10 percent of fraud victims report the incident. Imagine.) In response to this situation, the country in cooperation with the RCMP, opened an antifraud centre, which is not just to handle cases, but to study the growing nature of fraud. One example: the internet now gives obvious but ever widening opportunity for fraudsters, made clear in but one example: fake characters on Match.com who create new names for their on line dating service, to cash in on naïve, perhaps lonely, men and women.
Last year enough people handed over cash for dates with this woman or that man, so that the sponsoring individuals, names unknown, cashed in at over $10 million. The antifraud centre, a couple of months ago, reported that men and women in their fifties to seventies, lost most in the scams. It’s sad to report but the causes most exploited by the fraudsters were very ethical causes: disasters, charities’ funding, fake requests on email.
The Anti-Fraud Centre, (overseen collectively by the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police and the National Competition Bureau,) was formed in the face of a tidal wave of this very wounding crime. It at least serves as an institutional warning, educating us on what’s out there. Among its claims is that it will provide up to date information on fresh frauds, scam statistics, trends in trickery, and, perhaps the most important but least practiced “timely and compassionate assistance to victims of fraud.” I’m afraid I’ve heard that the “compassionate assistance” is rarely available to those who, so often elderly, are exploited by these dreadful crooks. In fact, an official document virtually admits that it’s not doing that much to help the wounded seniors. It admits that seniors are far too often the targets of the scam artists.
“Seniors are targeted for many reasons,” its mission statement says, “loneliness, lack of family support, age vulnerability and for health reasons such as Alzheimer’s. Seniors are susceptible to fraud because their generation tends to be more trusting and less likely to end conversations. Fraudulent telemarketers build relationships with seniors and gain their trust before victimizing them. Ruined family lives, great financial losses and suicides have resulted from this brutal crime against the elderly.” All this reflects the cruelty of the fraudulent thuggish individuals who practice this unconscionable trade, which, in my limited experience, exploits so many seniors. That in turn brought back dimly to my memory a line I went back to. It’s from the great British essayist of the 19th century, Samuel Johnson: “Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”
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For a statement released by Publishers Clearing House see: http://info.pch.com/consumer-information/fraud-protection
For a statement by The Canadian Government see: http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/03074.html
All past blogs are archived on my website: your comments are welcome here: www.kennethbagnell.com.
After reading your blog what came to my mind were the words of Jesus as found in the gospel of John chapter 2 and verse 25 which reads in the wording of the New Revised Standard Version “But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.”