"You won the lottery!" scammer picks wrong victim (former FBI and CIA chief William Webster) (1 Viewer)

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The old man's still got it.

The caller with the Jamaican accent told the 90-year-old District man he had won $72 million and a new Mercedes Benz in the Mega Millions lottery, but the man needed to send $50,000 in taxes and fees to get his money. He also told the Washington man he’d done his research on the top winner.

“You’re a great man,” the Jamaican man cajoled. “You was a judge, you was an attorney, you was a basketball player, you were in the U.S. Navy, homeland security. I know everything about you. I even seen your photograph, and I seen your precious wife.”

The Jamaican’s research didn’t turn up everything. He didn’t learn that the man he was calling was the former director of the FBI and the CIA, the only person ever to hold both jobs. And he didn’t know that William H. Webster would call him back the next day with the FBI listening in. In that reverse sting, Webster obtained the man’s real name and email address, while stringing him along and never quite committing to sending the $50,000.

The conversation was one of many calls that [Keniel A.] Thomas made to Webster or his wife, Lynda, in 2014, including one in which he promised a bullet “straight to the head” of Lynda.
. . .
He pleaded guilty in October and faced a prison term of 33 to 41 months under federal sentencing guidelines. But with Webster and his wife in the courtroom, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell on Friday added another 2½ years to Thomas’s sentence, giving him nearly six years to serve. Howell said that the scam qualified as “organized criminal activity” and that Thomas posed “a threat to a family member of the victim.”

“The threat of death to another person is a most serious crime," Webster told the judge, "for which Mr. Thomas is about to pay. … We truly hope that word has spread into the criminal community of scammers that our Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies are clamping down on such predatory behaviors.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/crim...amaican-phone-scammer/?utm_term=.8edeb3307a59
 
Meh, justice in general. Luckily he preyed upon someone with the recourse to stop him rather than some elderly person who might send him some money.
 
Exactly. If my mother calls and complains to law enforcement about this, no one would do a thing.

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Man, where's the FBI when the IRS calls me saying there's a warrant for my arrest . . . .
 
Way back when before I knew better I was called by a scammer like this. I told the caller that I was in the middle of something but I would call them right back if they gave me THEIR phone #. I gave the phone # to the authorities. The authorities were aggravated at me for even calling them.
 
They are doing basically nothing to stop these scammers. I get a few calls a day on most days from random spoof numbers that I don't answer. They have no fear of getting caught and It's just getting worse. The FBI needs to start taking this more serious. I read that these victims collectively lose 9.5 billion dollars a year. Why isn't that enough for them to go after these guys harder?

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-phone-scams-cost-americans-last-year-2017-04-19
 
They are doing basically nothing to stop these scammers. I get a few calls a day on most days from random spoof numbers that I don't answer. They have no fear of getting caught and It's just getting worse. The FBI needs to start taking this more serious. I read that these victims collectively lose 9.5 billion dollars a year. Why isn't that enough for them to go after these guys harder?

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-phone-scams-cost-americans-last-year-2017-04-19

Often the scammers are off-shore, just using domestic numbers. I think that complicates prosecution substantially.
 
Often the scammers are off-shore, just using domestic numbers. I think that complicates prosecution substantially.

Then they need to pass legislation that requires the phone providers to block off-shore people from having this type of access. That means the telecommunications companies would have to invest is some sort of system to prevent this, so their lobbyist will block it.
 
I get a lot of these calls spam and scammer calls, but I don't need the government to solve them for me. I think the solution is far more likely to come from technological advancement.
 
I am in the Justice is Justice category. I see/hear too many stories of these leeches taking advantage of people, especially the elderly or uneducated. I hope that he does all 6 years and comes out a lifeless shell of a man. These people fall in the same category as pedophiles in my book.
 
I am in the Justice is Justice category. I see/hear too many stories of these leeches taking advantage of people, especially the elderly or uneducated. I hope that he does all 6 years and comes out a lifeless shell of a man. These people fall in the same category as pedophiles in my book.

So if you reported an assault on your kid and it was ignored, but an assault on an FBI director's kid was aggressively pursued, wouldn't you have a problem with that and think that justice was not being equally applied?
 
So if you reported an assault on your kid and it was ignored, but an assault on an FBI director's kid was aggressively pursued, wouldn't you have a problem with that and think that justice was not being equally applied?


Get out of here trying to turn this around. My statement was clearly about one of these leeches getting caught and punished. Yes my personal opinion equates them to the level of a pedophile. No where in my statement did the severity of the crime become equal. Do you honestly think anyone, anywhere will come out and be ok with authorities ignoring a complaint of assault on a child? The vast amount of these calls/attempted crimes are virtualy impossible to police especially with the international hurdles that come into play for essentially a non-violent crime. Take it somewhere else.
 

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