Caller told this Indy senior she owed $7,000. She got out her credit card….

(AARP)

She looked tired, but no more than you would expect for somebody who had just pulled the overnight shift at FedEx. Now she was at her second job, running a retail cash register at one of the shops in the Indianapolis airport.

The work doesn’t pay much, she told me. It’s the old joke about “There are plenty of jobs - I’ve got three of ‘em,” but she’s not joking about needing the money.

And if times weren’t tight enough, she got scammed on the phone the other day and nearly lost $7,000.

(Know someone else who needs a reminder about scams? Show them the Federal Trade Commission’s site for spotting frauds.)

13 hours a day

She told me all about it, but the story really starts with working two jobs at an age when many people have retired. I asked her, so you work at FedEx all night and come in here?

“I do,” she said. “I’ve got five and a half hours there, and then seven and a half here.”

So, 13 hours a day. My guess was, she’s in her mid-60s. I’ve always heard that FedEx jobs involve a lot of lifting.

“I don’t pick up the cargo,” she said. “I scan it and send it where it needs to go. But we’re very busy. There are forklifts everywhere, and I’m in the middle of it. You have to watch out.”

'You owe us'

After a night like that, she’s pretty tired. But there’s this other job in retail to make ends meet. And now she’s got this phone call on her mind, the one that had her worried all day.

“I got that call and it made me sick,” she said

The phone message said, you owe us $7,000, supposedly from a debt back in 2000.

It didn’t sound right, but she wasn’t sure - who knows what she was doing 19 years ago? She called back and told the man she didn’t know what he was talking about. But he said it was a bad debt, and he gave her the “case number” as proof.

Well, she said, she didn’t have that kind of money. Could she pay them less?

He said let me check with my manager, and came back to say she would have to pay at least $4,100. Maybe, he said, they could work out a payment plan. They asked what kind of car she had, and threatened to take it. They told her if she didn’t have the money now she would have to make payments of $550 a month.

Wait a minute...

Then she did something else she later regretted:

“I gave them my Visa and debit card numbers. I told them that way, when I have the rest of the money it’ll be in the bank account and you can just get it then.”

No, don’t do that. She knew it was wrong as soon as she put down the phone.

“And then I thought well, wait a minute.”

There’s a sick feeling when we realize what’s happened.

“I got ill because I didn’t know what to do about it.”

She called her bank right away and explained it. They canceled the cards and confirmed that nothing had been taken.

Easy to get fooled

It sounds like she acted just in time -  but not everybody does.

Fraud against seniors happens all the time. Older folks often have more savings and own their homes, they have more assets and can be more vulnerable. Last year the Federal Trade Commission said its most recent survey found an estimated 25.6 million adults were victims of fraud.

Older people are more likely to be victims of bogus prize promotions than were younger consumers, the report said. This is tax season, and there are fake IRS calls. They’re also targeted for imposter scams, “business opportunities,” fake opioid addiction treatments and cancer cure products.

One of the most common scams is fake "tech support." AARP notes the FTC has been pursuing con artists who trick people into believing their computers have a virus - and supposedly need to pay hundreds of dollars to remove it.

Maybe the moral is, when you work two jobs and get tired – whatever your age - you are more susceptible to sketchy phone calls.

The FTC has started a campaign called “Pass It On” to educate the public, including older folks. Imposter scams like the fake-debt call are common.

“You get a call or an email. It might say you’ve won a prize. It might seem to come from a government official,” the agency says.

“Maybe it seems to be from someone you know — your grandchild, a relative or a friend. Or maybe it’s from someone you feel like you know, but you haven’t met in person — say, a person you met online who you’ve been writing to.

“Whatever the story, the request is the same: wire money to pay taxes or fees, or to help someone you care about. But is the person who you think it is? Is there an emergency or a prize? Judging by the complaints to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the answer is no. The person calling you is pretending to be someone else.”

For more on consumer fraud, check out the FTC’s guide – and Pass It On.

- John Strauss, jcs1122@yahoo.com