February 27, 2011 in City

Spokane man, 61, loses nearly $3,000 in latest cycle of scams

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Jim Patterson lost almost $3,000 in a scam before he realized he would never see the money again.

The 61-year-old Spokane man was trying to get a $30,000 personal loan to do home repairs. Instead, he got swindled.

He had responded to a newspaper advertisement placed by Penbrook Lending Institution, a company supposedly based in Chicago that processes personal loans. He applied for the loan and was approved a few days later, but the company said it needed collateral. Patterson offered up his home. The company wanted cash. So Patterson wired $1,300 to Jamaica, where the company claimed the wealthy financier of his loan was vacationing.

The $30,000 never appeared in his account. When he spoke with the lending company again, it said it needed more money, so he wired another $1,300. The loan he was promised never showed up, and when he called the company back, the number had been disconnected. Letters he wrote to the company came back as undeliverable. The Better Business Bureau contacted the company and asked for its credentials but never received them.

“At that point in time I basically had to kiss that money goodbye,” he said. “I’ll never see it. I just want the people prosecuted so they don’t take advantage of other people.”

Patterson believes the crooks were professionals with a well-thought-out plan. It didn’t occur to Patterson he was being scammed until it was too late.

“They’re always one step ahead of the law,” he said. “They put their line in the water to fish and wait for someone to bite.”

‘Under the ether’

Scammers often prey on victims’ emotions, said Doug Shadel, Washington’s AARP director, who has spoken with dozens of former con artists.

“When you’re in a heightened emotional state, you just don’t make good decisions,” he said. “Your thinking is clouded, and that’s what they’re banking on.”

The crook gets the victim “under the ether” so they don’t think things through before acting, he said.

The sweepstakes/lottery scam is a classic example. Blinded by the desire to get rich quick, victims will wire money to claim a large prize, often without considering whether they even entered a contest. People can be swindled by these scams more than once.

“What we found is people almost get addicted, almost like gambling,” said Jack Zurlini Jr., Washington’s assistant attorney general. “They want to believe it’s true, but of course it isn’t.”

Scammers also victimize people by gaining their trust and, in some cases, preying on their loneliness. If a victim is widowed, a con man might establish a relationship over the course of a year.

“It’s someone they’ve never met, but they’ve been groomed to think they can trust them,” he said. “I’ve seen it to the point where they take out a second mortgage just to send the perpetrators money. Just for love.”

Most theft, however, isn’t perpetrated by a stranger. About 80 to 90 percent of scams are perpetrated by a friend, family member or someone with power of attorney, said Detective Kirk Kimberly with the Spokane Police Department.

“The problem is, you trust your family members,” he said. “That can lead to some incredibly serious problems,” such as the loss of the victim’s home or entire life savings.

“The more trust the victim has in the perpetrator, the easier the hit is.”

Catching the crooks

Scam rates are cyclical – they tend to be more prevalent around the holidays – but lately there has been a rash of scams in the area, Kimberly said. And con men are advancing beyond amateur, quick-hit scams; they’re doing their research beforehand and often running 50 to 60 scams at the same time.

Because the crimes are becoming more sophisticated and often originate outside the country – and out of local law enforcement’s jurisdiction – they are rarely successfully investigated.

Many victims fail to report the crimes out of embarrassment, adding to the difficulty of investigations. The reporting rate is less than 25 percent, AARP’s Shadel said. Older victims are less likely to report than younger ones, he said.

“That means a lot of these people are suffering in silence,” he said. “They’re just taking it and not telling anyone.”

16 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  west on February 27 at 7:46 a.m.

  Always a victim for this crime….not to bright light bulbs out there.Sad…live and learn.

• 

  de3 on February 27 at 8:30 a.m.

  Is this type of scam more or less prevalent in Spokane or other smaller cities and towns?

• 

  ginniet on February 27 at 9:05 a.m.

  Unless people are elderly or suffering from Alzheimer’s or some other debilitating disease, I don’t understand why people keep falling for these scams. These predators tried to hoodwink my mom before her death, but she was both elderly and suffering from Alzheimer’s. My sister and I had to constantly monitor her mail to keep her from sending money to these people. She was vulnerable and gullible enough to believe she had won lotteries or that the government had money that was owed to her. But since she was in her 80s and not in good health, that was somewhat understandable. I just don’t understand why anyone else would believe them.

• 

  DickAdams on February 27 at 9:32 a.m.

  Their are so many low life’s out there. Sad.

• 

  pjc on February 27 at 9:43 a.m.

  Terrible. I feel bad for this guy.

  Why did he fall for this? Many otherwise normal people fall for these types of things and human beings are good at putting on blinders and rationalizing things away.

• 

  Elkay on February 27 at 9:52 a.m.

  Ginnie Todd, what a good example you set of you and your sister monitoring your mom’s financial affairs in her vulnerable later years. These predators are just that, and learn who they can scam very quickly — the young or old, frequently ignorant, but always vulnerable in some particular way.

  I can only hope the victims or victims’ families will report what has happened, instead of being embarrassed about their ‘transaction’.

  Maybe more of these bottom-feeders will be arrested, prosecuted, and get perpetual e-coli while serving prison time.

• 

  djburnham on February 27 at 10:24 a.m.

  He probably thought that since it was in a newspaper it was legit…. how much time and trouble could it take for newspapers, tv, and radio to double check the legality of ads that they take money to run? Don’t they bear some of the responsibility? It makes me ill to see a tv channel deny that they have anything to do with an interstitial commercial and then run it anyway…. they might as well run ads for the black market and getting into the country illegally. It’s amusing to watch the news anchors huff and puff about scams and then run an ad for fake medications with so much tiny writing on the bottom that you can hardly see the actors. Maybe it is time for someone to sue the newspapers that ran the ad.

• 

  DavidBray on February 27 at 12:29 p.m.

  Heck, I was scammed out of $5000 in 2009 by some folks using a perfect Ebay website copy. I did some homework and tracked the recipients to Las Vegas. Called their PD, our SPD and a few others including the FBI with info.

  Never even got a call back from any of them. Crime pays big time when the authorities do nothing.

• 

  Elkay on February 27 at 1:39 p.m.

  @DavidBray,

  Your story is very upsetting to hear three agencies kicking the can down the road. $5K is significant. Sorry to hear of your loss.

• 

  zelda on February 27 at 2:29 p.m.

  At 61, he isn’t what I would term elderly. But predators are always lurking about waiting to exploit victims of any age. Heck, a lot of the cheapo furniture store advertisements could qualify as shady lending. When you see a solid block of text in 6-point type flash by in the commercial, that should be a red flag that they’ve calculated the odds that people in certain income brackets will miss a payment and then all the accrued interest comes down like a ton of bricks.

  The most shameless hucksters on TV, in my opinion, are the televangelists. I’ve known many elderly people who spend their days listening to their pleas for money and they send it in. For that they get “redemption,” which is, let’s say, kind of intangible.

  And the stories are legion about otherwise-smart people taken in by the Nigerian scam.

  Sorry he got taken to the cleaners, but all of us have probably fallen for some sort of scam or rip-off to a greater or lesser degree. You really have to be on your toes to stay ahead of the con artists.

• 

  DickAdams on February 27 at 3:08 p.m.

  At times I view ebay like I do pawn shops. Most everybody knows pawn shops handle merchandise that is so hot you can`t touch it. Through I suppose it may be kind of safe inasmuch as most of the merchandise was paid for by insurance claims and the owners stop looking for it.

• 

  bszottlinger on February 27 at 8:24 p.m.

  Zelda:

  You bring up and interesting question. I’m not sure exactly what you consider “elderly” and the only real international standard I could find is the World Health Organization drawing a comparison between developed countries and Africa.(linked below). I don’t know how some of the other posters here might feel but as for me… why should we believe the World Health Organization… or the U. N., what the heck do they know.

  Here is a quote from the site;

  Definition of an older or elderly person
  “Most developed world countries have accepted the chronological age of 65 years as a definition of ‘elderly’ or older person, but like many westernized concepts, this does not adapt well to the situation in Africa. While this definition is somewhat arbitrary, it is many times associated with the age at which one can begin to receive pension benefits. At the moment, there is no United Nations standard numerical criterion, but the UN agreed cutoff is 60+ years to refer to the older population.”

  I hope this doesn’t offend anyone that may soon be reaching a World Health Organization, or United Nations standard. After all “It’s all good!” Besides it was the USA that invented Viagra

  http://www.who.int/healthinfo/survey/ageingdefnolder/en/index.html

• 

  Kivaari on February 27 at 9:36 p.m.

  Why try these unknown institutions? If you can’t walk into a large recognised banking firm, why bother. Wells Fargo and Spokane Teachers Cerdit Union see to have good loans.

• 

  Elkay on February 28 at 1:49 a.m.

  My Pre-Birthday Party just ended. I am now officially an Elder, and ready to offer wisdom and experience!

• 

  lewis8457 on February 28 at 12:12 p.m.

  Why would someone go through a out of town lender if they had good credit? It is easier to do business here. He should have known something was up when they did not want his house.

  My parents have been robbed several times each time my step dad hired a private investigator to find their stuff. The last time the private eye found the culprits but the sheriff told my step-father they couldn’t do anything since the sheriff had not discovered the culprits themselves. The private eye told my dad that was bull. He never heard another word from the sheriff.

• 

  Open_Spokane on February 28 at 7:10 p.m.

  Do business locally, its good for everyone in these tough times.