News Photo by Julie Riddle In her Grand Lake home on Sept. 12, Sally Dick recalls the money in her bank accounts disappearing before her eyes on Aug. 20, the night a phone scam almost robbed her of thousands of dollars.

ALPENA — It started with a blank computer screen and an alarming message: “Your computer is compromised. Call this number. Call it now.”

Sally Dick did what so many of us would do. She made the call.

Don’t worry, we can fix it, the Presque Isle resident was told — for $100.

Phone scams target everyone. Devious minds use an invention meant to bring people together to make their victims willing accomplices in robbing themselves.

Many Michigan State Police posts, including in Alpena, have stopped taking scam complaints, according to Sgt. Chris Wicklund, because the crimes are unsolvable. Beyond making sure a person’s identity isn’t stolen — which is not usually the goal of scammers — there is little police can do to catch someone perpetrating a scam, or to recover the money lost.

Police shared story after story of Northeast Michigan residents who have become victims of scams, which cost Americans $1.5 billion in 2018, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Several days after Dick gave an anonymous voice permission to fix her computer, the phone rang. The computer repair had failed, the caller said, and they needed access to Dick’s bank account so they could refund her money.

What she should have done, Dick reflected later, was hang up.

Instead, she logged in to her account, the caller following her moves through remote access to the computer.

“I don’t know what was wrong with me,” Dick said. “It was almost like I was hypnotized. Everything he told me to do, I did.”

As she looked at her computer screen, the caller still on the line, all the numbers in her bank accounts changed to zeros.

The caller, now menacing, informed Dick that he wouldn’t keep her money as long as she did a little favor for him. She was instructed to purchase $2,000 in gift cards and wire their balance via Western Union by 10:30 the next morning.

“Of course, he scared the crap out of me,” Dick said.

Early the next morning, she was at her bank, confirming that, despite what she had seen with her own eyes the night before, her funds were all still securely in their accounts. With her bank’s help, she quickly worked to secure the accounts, making sure her money was safe.

At 10:30 a.m. the phone rang.

She didn’t answer it.

‘SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO MY INTUITION’

Though all it takes to defeat most phone scammers is the simple push of a button, it can be difficult to take that simple action, police say.

“I thought in the back of my mind that I should hang up, but I just kept talking,” Dick said. “I should have listened to my intuition.”

Scammers use high-pressure tactics to confuse their targets, insisting immediate action must be taken to avoid some terrible result, such as a computer crash, an arrest by the IRS, a grandchild incarcerated.

This spring, a Presque Isle County man was convinced by a caller that his granddaughter was in jail in Grand Rapids and needed him to post her $20,000 bond.

The man was told to overnight cash to an address in Philadelphia, the cash hidden between the pages of a book. By the time he reported the theft to police the next day, the package had been dropped off at a vacant building by United Parcel Service and picked up by an unknown person, despite efforts by UPS and the Philadelphia police to intercept the pickup.

A Rogers City woman recently lost thousands of dollars after a caller said her grandson was in trouble. Don’t tell anyone, she was told, or the caller wouldn’t be able to help.

By the time her family learned of the scheme, several thousand-dollar transactions had taken place, the money probably lost forever.

Hoping to fly under the radar of vigilant banks, scammers generally ask for several smaller payments rather than one big one, according to Rogers City Police Department Sgt. Jamie Meyer, who investigated the Rogers City case.

Sometimes, a scam promises something irresistibly good. Earlier this year, a local man came into the Michigan State Police-Alpena Post reporting he had sent $2,500 to a caller who had promised him vast winnings from a contest, if only he would send money so it could clear customs. The man approached police when he was asked for another $1,500 on top of what he had already paid.

“I asked him, did you enter a contest?” Wicklund, of the State Police, said.

The man, chagrinned, admitted he had not.

CALLING MEXICAN POLICE

Scammers are adept at using technology to their advantage, hijacking internet addresses and phone numbers to make it appear their call or email originates from somewhere trustworthy. They evolve to stay ahead of suspicion, Wicklund said, adjusting their tactics when law enforcement turns the heat on.

In 2016, a Hubbard Lake woman lost several thousand dollars when a caller convinced her he had given her too big a refund for antivirus software he claimed to have tried to install on her computer. Following instructions, the woman purchased gift cards worth $3,000 and gave the scammer the codes.

Her money was gone instantly.

An Alpena County victim, contacted by someone posing as a close relative in trouble, sent $4,200 to Mexico, out of U.S. jurisdiction.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever called a Mexican police department before, but they don’t work too well with northern Michigan law enforcement,” Deputy Michael Lash of the Alpena County Sheriff’s Office said.

Scammers go for emotion, Lash said, pulling at heartstrings to encourage their victims to act, and act quickly.

An Alpena man attempting to purchase a vehicle around 2010 connected with a woman he believed to be the widow of a fallen American soldier killed in Afghanistan. After an exchange of emails and phone calls, he wired $4,000 to an address he thought was in California. Instead, the money went to New York and was picked up by someone with a fake driver’s license, connected to a fake business opened for 30 days and closed again just as quickly.

The people planning scams go to elaborate lengths, a spider web so intricate “we can’t scratch the surface of this level of fraud,” Wicklund said.

‘MORE MONEY THAN YOU AND I ARE MAKING’

Scammers target the vulnerable, according to Undersheriff Keith Myers of the Alcona County Sheriff’s Office, seeking out those easily confused, unfamiliar with technology, or too nice to say no.

Myers worries about his mother. She grew up believing that, when the phone rang, you picked up and talked to the caller. Anything else was rude.

Many spammers gather information about victims online, or even from the victims themselves, the better to give the illusion that the call is legitimate. If the person who answers a call starts talking, the caller knows patience and careful wording is an investment that may net them thousands of dollars, Wicklund said.

“If they make 100 calls a day and they get one person, they’ve won,” Lash said. “And they’re making more money than you and I are making.”

Despite a common belief that only older adults fall for scams, they can affect anyone, in any walk of life.

A woman visiting Alpena from downstate fell victim to a scammer posing as police, threatening to arrest her if she didn’t post bond immediately. Although she couldn’t think of anything she had done wrong to give rise to police action, she allowed the caller to stay on the phone with her for hours, walking her through the process of purchasing gift cards and giving him thousands of dollars.

“This was a professional, very educated lady,” said Lt. Eric Hamp of the Alpena Police Department. “It happens.”

Wicklund, of the Michigan State Police, was once caught by a scammer’s tactics, himself. Though an experienced police officer trained to spot criminal activity, Wicklund reacted to an urgent alert message on his computer. The glaring words told him he had three minutes to call a number or a virus would take over his computer. He called.

A foreign voice claimed to need numbers that would allow them to repair his computer. Wicklund hung up. Not 45 seconds later, they called back. And called back again.

The officer had to ignore the ringing phone about 20 times before the caller finally gave up.

“These scams happen to everybody,” Wicklund said. “It should scare everybody.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.

Imposter scams in Michigan

2014: 5,568

2015: 9,334

2016: 8,865

2017: 10,274

2018: 11,844

2019: 14,786 *

* An estimate, based on numbers from first half of year

Source: Federal Trade Commission