ST. LOUIS (AP) - Susan is 66, lives in Clayton, has a doctorate in American studies and has taught at St. Louis Community College. She's no dummy. Yet she fell for one of the hoariest of scams this month.
On the day after Labor Day at 7:15 a.m., the phone rang.
"Aunt Susan, I'm in real trouble," the caller said.
"I thought it was my nephew," Susan said.
The caller had a New England accent, just like the real young man.
"He had been in a terrible accident and his insurance had lapsed," Susan said. "He said he was sitting in a police station."
The people he'd hit were from out of the country. To get out of trouble, he had to send them money fast.
She got off the phone and tried to call her nephew at home. His voice mail was full. She tried to call her brother and sister-in-law, with no luck.
Her "nephew" kept calling, again and again. She sent money. He called back, saying he needed more, so she sent it.
"I sent the money to Mexico, one bunch with MoneyGram and two with Western Union," she said. The toll: $3,000.
When she finally reached her real nephew, she knew she'd been fooled. So when the cheat called again, she told him she knew.
"Your money is gone," he said and hung up.
She fell for what's often called a "grandma scam," since the victims are often grandmothers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported (http://bit.ly/1qAoIXh ). Scammers troll social media sites to gather names, relationships and other information shared with the world. They may know a lot about a person when they call.
Con artists are always looking for trusting people, so I am withholding Susan's last name. But hers is an old story to Detective Jack Abell of the Clayton police.
"These scams go on daily, and it's not just the elderly," said Abell, who wouldn't talk about Susan's case because it is under investigation.
A version of the scam goes on by email. Cheats hack a person's email account and send messages to all their contacts. They claim to have been robbed and left penniless overseas, then ask the victim to wire money.
Abell's advice: Don't believe it without verifying it by phone with someone you know.
A tipoff: If the person wants you to send money via Western Union, MoneyGram or Green Dot, it's very probably a scam.
As a victim, Susan has plenty of company.
"We are awash in a sea of fraud in the U.S.," said Steven Baker, who heads the Federal Trade Commission's Midwest region.
Baker spoke last week to group at the Gatesworth senior living center in University City last week. In University City alone over the past year, the FTC heard 23 complaints from residents who lost $1,000 to $10,000 to scams, two complaints over the loss of $10,000 to $20,000 and one complaint from a person who lost more than $20,000.
Common frauds include claims that the recipient won a sweepstakes. They may need the victim's bank account numbers to send the money. Or, the victim may have to send in money for taxes before claiming the prize.
Puppy scams are now popular. Con artists offer cute dogs online, but they need money for shots or air transport. "There ain't no damn puppy," Baker said. "We've gotten something like 30,000 complaints on this."
Some scams are automated: Robo-calls are computer generated telephone pitches that ask you punch a number to speak to a live person.
Making robo-calls to sell something is against the law. "Do not believe anything they say," Baker said. (Political messages, school closing alerts and similar nonsales robo-calls are allowed.)
"Anybody who calls and says you have a problem with your computer is a scam," Baker said.
Old people tend to be targeted for a simple reason: They have more money than young people. In some cases, thieves can also play on loneliness, or the mental infirmities of age.
Elderly victims fall for callers who claim to be from Medicare, trolling for Social Security numbers and other information to create a false identity. They may claim to be from Social Security needing the victim's bank account information to deposit money.
The scammers are usually overseas, which makes them hard to catch.
U.S. Attorney Stephen R. Wigginton's office in Southern Illinois has a specialty in chasing them. It's not easy to do, because it involves cooperation from foreign police and the State Department on extraditions.
His office in July indicted three Canadians in a Medicare scam. The telemarketers said they were from Social Security or Medicare and told victims that they had to purchase a drug discount card to keep receiving benefits, according to prosecutors. Actually, the same card was available free online.
Foreign fraudsters have regional specialties. Grandparent scammers, for instance, tend to be from Montreal. Puppy cheats are from Cameroon in West Africa.
Sweepstakes fraudsters come from Jamaica. "There are areas of Montego Bay that used to be little shacks. Now there are mansions," Baker said.
Nigerians, notorious for email scams, have branched into the lonely hearts business.
Wigginton's office has indictments against two Nigerians who trolled for money on dating websites. One was arrested in London, the other in South Africa.
Both pretended to be U.S. servicemen and widowers with teenage children. Their targets were middle-age American women.
On a phone chat, one explained his accent by saying he was born in Greece.
"It's a grooming process," said Bruce Reppert, who heads the federal prosecutor's fraud and corruption office in the Metro East. "The bad guy pretends to be falling in love with the woman."
There can be months of emails and online chats before the man suddenly develops a crisis and asks for money.
Baker was in town to introduce a new "fraud squad" made up of seniors, who plan to spread the warnings about fraud to other seniors.
It's a partnership between the FTC and Wells Fargo Advisors. The big St. Louis brokerage has its own squad of seven people assigned to step in when a broker suspects that a client may be falling victim to fraud.
The team at the nation's second-biggest retail brokerage house is getting 200 such calls a month.