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- In 2017 my dad called me panicked in the middle of the night.
- He begged me to turn on my phone camera and show him where I was.
- It turned out he almost got scammed into paying a ransom for me, while I was asleep and safe.
I remember vividly the sound of my dad's voice asking me to turn on the camera on my phone. He was in a panic; I was dead asleep and didn't understand what was happening.
"Where are you?" he kept repeating. My answer that I was at home with my boyfriend did not satisfy him. He didn't explain what was happening until he saw my sleepy face in the middle of my Brooklyn apartment.
"I almost got scammed," he said. "I thought you were kidnapped."
Phone and online scams are increasingly sophisticated. Even people who think they are smart enough to avoid getting scammed are vulnerable, as a recent article in The Cut pointed out. For older adults who aren't necessarily that tech-savvy, the risks are even greater.
Scammers called him in the middle of the night
The next day, my dad explained what had happened. Someone called him in the middle of the night and told him I had been kidnapped and he needed to pay a ransom if he wanted to see me again.
He said they put the phone over to "me" and that the person sounded like the real me. He said he kept trying to ask if I was OK and started yelling at the person on the phone, waking up my mom.
The person on the phone made it clear they had to wire money if they wanted me released. My dad was ready to do it when — in a second of clarity — he realized the kidnappers were talking in Spanish.
I lived in New York City, and they lived in Argentina. While there are many Spanish speakers in NYC, the people on the phone were also Argentine. Something seemed off.
My dad called me at 2 a.m.
My dad gave my mom the phone and asked her to get the wire transfer information from them. He then grabbed my mom's phone and called my American cellphone. He called my then-boyfriend when I didn't pick up — because I had left my phone in another room. Confused, he told me it was my mom on the phone. I feared for the worse.
When I answered all I could hear was his panicked voice asking me if I was OK. I said yes, I was sleeping and what was up. He kept asking me to turn on my camera because he needed to verify that I was OK.
Once he saw me in my apartment, he calmed down. He grabbed the phone from my mom and told the scammers to go fuck themselves.
It wasn't the last time someone attempted to scam them
This is a common scam in Argentina. It's so popular that I know at least a handful of friends' parents and grandparents who have fallen for it and transferred thousands of dollars to strangers.
These scams have become so common that my parents were targeted again in December 2023 with a different storyline.
This time, it was someone pretending to be me at the bank. The woman said that she had run out of money and needed my parents to transfer some money so she could make it to the end of the month.
My dad, knowing it was not me, decided to play along and asked for her ID number and bank information. Once he had everything, he hung up and reported it to the bank.
I'm grateful for my dad's quick thinking, but I also worry about them as they get older and scams become more complex. Whenever he gets an email he doesn't feel good about, he forwards it to me. Nine out of 10 times, I need to tell him it's phishing.
The FBI recommends people don't pick up calls from phone numbers they don't recognize, something many millennials and Gen Zers avoid anyway. They also suggest that if you receive a call from a family member asking for money, call that person before making any transfers.
Based on my parents' experience, they now know to call me first for anything, and they know I will always pick up their phone calls — even in the middle of the night.