Dial F for Fraud

His script in front of him, Tom Keary is on the line with yet another victim from the so-called sucker list, another hapless retired Joe with discretionary cash to offer up to an enterprising guy just like himself.

Keary has his questions to ferret out which marks can be most easily separated from their money--which might send a check to collect a bogus sweepstakes prize, for example, or plunk down a monthly retirement check to buy Everglades swamp property sight unseen.

But the 70ish Keary isn’t going for the knockout punch. He’s not gunning for quick cash or a credit card number. He’s calling prior victims of telephone scams with a friendly warning, reminding them that the subtle phone crime--and all its shame and indignity--could very well visit them again.

Keary knows. He’s a former victim who lost $5,000 to a slick investment scam artist. Now he’s volunteering as part of a new task force that is fighting telephone scammers with the same coldly anonymous let-your-fingers-do-the-walking mentality the crooks employ: Get out the lists. Get on the phone. And give the people your best pitch.

In the first attempt of its kind in the nation, 16 county, state and federal agencies--including the FBI, the state attorney general’s office and U.S. postal inspectors--on Wednesday announced an ongoing “reverse boiler room,” named after the makeshift offices from which telephone scammers last year bilked $40 billion from an unsuspecting American public.

Once a week for the next year, working from donated offices in West Los Angeles, two dozen volunteers like Keary will contact a pool of more than 85,000 former phone scam victims nationwide--their names culled from investigations and from lists confiscated during raids on illegal telemarketers.

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“I know how much losing your hard-earned money hurts,” said Keary, a retired engineer from Los Angeles. “I’ve had so many calls from these characters. It’s nice to turn the tables and beat them at their own game.”

The Telemarketing Victim Call Center reaches out to these former phone scam victims because investigators say they are likely to be continued targets of con artists: Victim lists are often sold among scammers for as much as $200 a name. In one ring operated from places known as “recovery rooms,” fraudulent telemarketers pose as investigators offering to recover a victim’s previous loss--for a fee, of course.

And surprising as it seems, people fall for the same lines again and again. One woman was pitched by con artists thousands of times, investigators said. And she took the bait, unwittingly offering up her money on several hundred occasions.

One FBI agent said: “The task force calls are going out across the country, and it’s kind of fitting we’re based in Los Angeles. Because as many as 60% of the telephone scam artists are themselves based right here in Southern California.”

Authorities speculate that the nomadic nature of the crooks has led them to shift their base here from previous spots like Las Vegas, and say it could change again.

A dozen volunteers, many wearing “I’m a Fraud Fighter” T-shirts, gathered Wednesday morning in second-story offices of L.A. Cellular. All of them were retirement age and had responded to invitations from the American Assn. of Retired Persons and the Retired Seniors Volunteer Program.

Doug Shadel, an AARP consumer affairs coordinator, explained that retirees are the most likely victims of telephone con artists: Research shows that 57% of all telephone fraud victims are over age 50.

“They have money, assets they’ve worked a lifetime for,” he said.”

“They call us because they know we won’t hang up,” added another volunteer. “Our generation was taught not to be rude on the telephone. We’ll listen to what they have to say.”

Postal Inspector Pamela Prince had a solution for people who just can’t hang up. “Just tell the person you’re interested and then set down the phone and walk away,” she said. “Stay away for 20 minutes, if you need to. Believe me, they’ll go away.”

But most victims don’t hang up. Frustrated investigators have watched telephone fraud rise from $1 billion a year a decade ago to more than $40 billion last year.

When authorities realized that warning programs featuring brochures failed to get people’s attention, they decided to do what the con artists do--pick up the telephone.

They will also train about 10,000 volunteers this year to offer get-smart seminars to former victims nationwide.

Organizers hope the phone calls will not only wise up former victims, but also perhaps get them to provide details of their fraud experiences.

“We have almost no research on this kind of crime,” Shadel said. “We don’t know how certain people were chosen and how they coped with being victims. Did they report the crimes and if not, why not?”

Tom Keary knows why: shame.

He has heard talk of phone fraud around local senior citizens centers. “But I’ve never talked about my own horror story,” he said. “Nobody likes to admit they’ve been scammed.”

Shadel warned the volunteers on Wednesday not to leave messages on answering machines. “We don’t want to embarrass people, leave some wife a message a husband might hear that says, ‘We’re from the victim calling center, and we understand that you’re a repeat victim who has lost thousands of dollars.’ ”

Volunteers were also told that disconnected lines meant victory, suggesting a victim had wised up and changed his or her telephone number.

Likewise, hang-ups were cause for celebration.

“This is the only calling center where a hang-up can be greeted with a ‘Hallelujah!’ Shadel said. “It means that people may finally be getting the message.”

Among the volunteers who began duty Wednesday were former victims like Keary, including a woman who said she had lost $400,000 to fraudulent telemarketers.

But most were people like Myca Aptaker, an 83-year-old retired probation officer from Mar Vista who just hates to see people get cheated.

As she picked up the receiver to make her first call, Aptaker was asked if she knew anyone who had ever lost money to a telephone scamster.

“No,” she said, smiling sweetly. “None of my friends are that stupid.”