|
Lonely singles often turn to personal ads and "lonely hearts" ads from prisoners can be attractive to desperate singles.
Often, however, rather than a prisoner actually looking for outside contact, such ads involve mail fraud scams.
In these cases the prisoner, which may be a male corresponding with an outside lonely female (or even a male posing as a female corresponding with an outside male) will gain the confidence of the intended victim.
Often the fraudster will advise the victim that he (or she) is in prison for a non-violent offense or was falsely accused, but will be released in the near future and begin a new life. Proposals of marriage are common, sight unseen.
Eventually the prisoner will ask the intended victim to cash one or more postal or other money orders, claiming that he (or she) needs the money to pay attorney fees, etcetera. These money orders, however, are small denomination instruments which are smuggled into the prison where the prisoner perpetuating the fraud alters the denominations. Thus a $1 money order is altered to show $500 or more.
Victims who cooperate by cashing such a money order (or more often money orders) are instructed to send the proceeds to third party--a friend of the prisoner who is helping with his or her alleged legal defense--or some similar fictitious project. The friend is, in fact, the outside accomplice.
Victims are usually instructed to deposit the money orders in their personal bank accounts--or simply retain them uncashed--and then pay out the face values of the money orders from other funds.
Shortly thereafter the victim usually receives a John Deere letter (as Jeff Daniels calls them) from the prisoner advising that he or she just did what they had to do to survive, but has finally been released from prison and now there will be no marriage and no further contact.
Typically, however, the prisoner has not been released, but is working the same con on other innocent persons. In most cases the victim is the one who is stuck for the difference between the original amount of the money order and the altered amount.
A related, but lesser scam involves prisoners telephoning into large local institutions, such as hospitals, asking for a specific person, then ultimately getting transferred back to a point where an outside line can be accessed. The only loss here is the cost of the long distance call(s) the prisoner makes which is charged to the institution.
______________________________
|
|
