Thinking Like the Pros and Cons
Insider Tips Can Help Turn Swindlers' Games Against Them

By Don Oldenburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 23, 2006

You've got to figure you can't slip much past Sid Kirchheimer. He is the AARP Bulletin's Scam Alert columnist, after all, and an inveterate reporter who has written a dozen medical and health books. If anyone can spot a swindle a mile away, he can.

But while investigating dozens of scams close-up for his new book, "Scam Proof Your Life: 377 Smart Ways to Protect You & Your Family From Ripoffs, Bogus Deals & Other Consumer Headaches," even Kirchheimer was surprised by the ingenuity and audacity of some of the tricks that fleece consumers of billions of dollars annually. Released tomorrow by Sterling Publishing Co. and the AARP, the 336-page anti-scam manual covers how to detect and protect yourself from consumer swindles, rip-offs and hassles -- including such things as auto-repair scams and identity theft, charity cheats and pickpockets.

The book looks at some of the more widely known scams that prove shocking just because of the number of victims they continue to dupe despite news stories and consumer alerts warning about them, says Kirchheimer. Take the "Nigerian letter scam" that typically arrives as an annoying spam e-mail from senders claiming to be foreign officials or relatives of dead foreign officials asking for your help in transferring a secret stash of millions of dollars to the United States in exchange for a sweet cut of the deal. Scam status: boring. Most consumers yawn and delete them without even looking. But plenty apparently don't.

"Tens of thousands of people a year fall for it," says Kirchheimer, who lives near Valley Forge, Pa. "I get letters every month asking if this is legitimate."

Same for bogus foreign sweepstakes, phony scholarship scams, free vacation ploys and other common cons that have bounced around forever. "Why would anyone fall for them? People think they're lucky or their ship has come in," says Kirchheimer.

Kirchheimer cautions against thinking scam victims are stupid. Most are ordinary people who are fooled by what often is a well-designed scheme, he says. "A lot of these scams are really well done. These guys know what they are doing. They have the answers, they have scripts," he says, mentioning that his April AARP Scam Alert is about "a bogus charity scam involving a single call center in rural Wisconsin where 50 telemarketers per shift operated around the clock calling people for donations to fake charities."

The idea for the book evolved from an article Kirchheimer wrote for the AARP's magazine in which he interviewed reformed scam artists about their tricks of the trade. "We got flooded with mail," he says of the feedback from readers.

Researching the book took a year and a half and included reviewing more than 1,000 documents and interviewing almost 200 experts, some of them ex-scammers who shared insider information, says Kirchheimer.

Probably the best known among his "primary sources," as Kirchheimer calls the reformed con artists, is Frank Abagnale, now a check-fraud prevention consultant whose teenage identity-theft exploits were depicted in the 2002 film "Catch Me If You Can," starring Leonardo DiCaprio. But there's also one-time identity thief Ron Hemphill and ex-jewel thief and cat burglar Bill Mason, whose firsthand advice (such as hiding valuables in your laundry room since crooks don't look there and keeping the television on when you're not home) make the book an invaluable resource.

"We went to the source," says Kirchheimer. "The part about getting ripped off by mechanics, that advice comes from mechanics. The part about getting ripped off by home repairmen, that advice comes from home repairmen."

Not all of the ruses he covers are the crooked, call-the-cops, illegal types of scams. The book is "a hybrid of bona fide scams as well as just ways to save money and not get taken," he says. "When you say 'scam,' you typically think of an illegal activity, but there are scores of legal loopholes that basically scam people."

Like what? Like when a longtime credit card holder misses a payment deadline, gets stuck with a fat late fee, and calls customer service to ask that the late fee be canceled. The customer rep says no problem. But, without telling the customer, the credit card company metes out punishment in other ways. "It's buried in the fine print that nobody reads, but if you have a single late fee, it can cause you to lose all your accumulated rewards and your interest rate can go up -- typically 10 points," he says. If you're carrying a balance, they might raise you to the default rate, which is close to 30 percent.

And the sneaky thing, he adds, "is that credit card companies give you a due date that is really their date to process the payment by, not the date it has to arrive."

Another rip-off that doesn't qualify as a felony but routinely victimizes vulnerable people is the way some hospitals identify their itemized charges to inflate bills, says Kirchheimer. "I love the 'hospitalese' -- how they hide charges. A 'mucus recovery system'; that's just a box of tissues, but they charge you $12. A 'thermal therapy kit' for $30 is a bag of ice cubes. A 'portable urinal device' for bedridden patients is a $10 plastic cup.

"And these are not isolated cases. Is it illegal? No, they can call it whatever they want. But is it a scam? Of course it's a scam."

Hospital overcharges alone total more than $10 billion a year, he says. "Legitimate studies show they can affect as many as three hospital bills in four, and the overcharge is as much as $1,200 a bill."

You want another sting, don't you? There are lots of pointers for consumers buying new cars -- including a heads-up on a little-known, underhanded tactic some new-car salesmen use to get an upper hand in negotiating the sale price. While the prospective buyer is off test-driving the car, the salesman uses the info from the customer's driver's license (photocopied as a condition for taking the test drive) to sneak a peek at his credit report online to determine how much he can afford, what he paid for his previous car, etc. Not only is that routine at some car dealerships, he says, but it's also illegal.

Some of the newest scams use new technology to bilk customers, says Kirchheimer. In ATM skimming, crooks mount a portable card-reading device onto the mouth of an ATM so when customers swipe their cards, the crooks collect the pin number and consumer information from the card's magnetic strip. And in a recent surge in phony jury scams, criminals using caller-ID-spoofing technology call up people to inform them that they failed to show up for jury duty and that a warrant has been issued for their arrest. The caller ID shows that the call is coming from a local court. When the victim protests that he never received notification, the scammers tell him he'll need to verify some information -- name, address and Social Security number.

"It's just amazing how many different ruses are played," says Kirchheimer, adding that since writing the book, he has stopped giving out his "real" e-mail address to anyone he doesn't know and uses a free e-mail address under a fake name for everyone else. "Some of them are the most common, some are classics, and some are the newer ones, and they're scamming billions of dollars."

Got questions or comments? A consumer complaint? A helpful tip? E-mail details toconsumer@washpost.comor write to Don Oldenburg, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. Because of the volume of mail, personal replies are not always possible.