The grandparent scam has been going around for a while, and has just hit new victims in the province. The scam works by calling someone and tricking them into thinking their relative - often a grandchild, sometimes a niece or nephew - is in some kind of legal trouble far away. As a result, the person is requested to send a big pile of money by wire transfer - which is conveniently difficult to trace - in order to help their relative. The actual relative is not aware of what is going on, because they are usually comfortably at home. It's only later that the crime is revealed, and even then some people do not report it due to the shame of being tricked.
The problem is how to prevent such crimes from occurring. From a grandparents' perspective, if they get any such calls they should probably hang up and phone the actual person in question. That is naturally going to be difficult, because the scam taps into the part of everyone's personality that makes them want to protect their families. If their relatives are truly in danger, then it might be too late if they hang up and try to contact them through other means. The scam works because it gives a sense of urgency, which makes it seem like it would take too long to verify with other sources, and people sometimes make poor decisions under such pressure.
So what can be done? This is something that we need to figure out from the younger relative's end. Since it's going to be our names being used to trick our relatives, we need to figure out how to let our grandparents know whether it's really us, or some kind of con artist trying to get their dirty hands on our grandparents' money. While I'm not an expert, I have a couple ideas of how to keep our elders at from getting suckered into this con.
The first step would naturally be find a way to keep in close touch with those elderly relatives. Phone them regularly, at least tell them about any big plans or trips being taken, keep them in the loop about what is going on in your life. That way, they will not believe their grandchild is in some third-world prison needing a lump sum for bail - after all, you tell them when you're going somewhere, and you never told them you were going to the country mentioned. Keeping them well informed about your life at the very least gets one layer between them and the con artists.
Another idea is to figure out a way for a family member to actually tell whether or not a relative is actually a relative. Give them a little question and answer, nothing complicated, but something that they can use to ascertain who the person is on the other line. Something only that grandchild would know, like a beloved childhood pet or maybe just a family joke, something that would be easy to recall in such a situation. The idea would be to just have the con artist on the other end show indications that they are lying, and allow the grandparent in question to hang up without remorse.
The sad part about the scam is that it works because the people being conned believe that their family is in trouble, and have no reason to doubt it. For their families, we need to give them reasons to doubt, and those are just a couple ideas for helping them know whether it's an actual grandchild or someone trying to dupe them.
