Old Woman Runs Sting And PWNS Two Con Men
A woman who was conned out of £60,000 by a pair of conmen got her own back when she tricked one into going to her home – only for the police to arrest him.
The 92-year-old victim was stung in a so-called ‘Courier Fraud’ after a conman called her home posing as a police detective claiming her bank account had been hacked.
He persuaded her to withdraw £8,300 in cash “for examination” and hand it to Zohaib Khalid – a student paid to play the role of police courier – when he visited on the morning of July 19 last year.
She arranged for Khalid to again call at her home in Solihull, West Mids., but when he arrived police were lying in wait and arrested him.
Full story here.
First thing’s first: this is a very cunning old lady. I read this article two times and still don’t really have any clue how this scam works, so the fact that she turned it around on these criminal masterminds with a snap of her fingers speaks both to her brilliance and to the number of concussions I’ve had. I mean she’s at that age where this could have gone one of two ways. Either she could have just gone the “I’m 92 and have better things to spend my time doing than taking down a crime ring,” or she could have gone the “I’m 92 and don’t have anything better to do than go down spiting these two scammers,” obviously it appears she chose the latter. More power to her.
Speaking of these criminal masterminds: this is a tough look. Actually, it’s not even a tough look: it’s a straight up not good look. You can’t get your shit busted by a nonagenarian and ever return to conning again. Your brand is ruined. Your marketable skills are now null and void. These are not our brightest minds anymore, guys. Sure they’ve got wisdom on their side, but you’ve got technology, a plan, and no cobwebs in your brains. We talked a little bit last week about how poachers should have at least have the self respect to hunt something that can hunt them back. That’s not too dissimilar from this story: as this is basically the equivalent of a poacher getting pecked to death by a dodo bird.
If you got reverse-conned by someone your own age that’s also embarrassing, but somewhat acceptable. It’s like those kidnappers from Taken: they didn’t know they were kidnapping the daughter of the angry Liam Neeson. Sure it’s not great they all got black ops’d to death, but none us we’re sitting in the theater muttering, “wow can’t believe those guys got beat by Liam Neeson”. If Liam Neeson was a geriatric patient with two bad hips and a life alert, we may have had a different reaction. That’s what this woman was: basically at death’s door, waiting out her days, when these two motherfuckers went in for the con.
You can’t discount the old person wild card factor. That thing that just allows them to grasp with all of their life-force onto one last cause. We saw it with the crazy old lady who shot a handgun at those motorcycle kids last week, and we see it here. Old people, you either trifle with them and are loser because you trifled with an old person, or you trifle with them and ruin your con-credibility forever: lose-lose.
