Monday, September 6, 2010

Deceptive Practices

I have power of attorney for my 90-something, end-stage-Alzheimer’s aunt. That consists mostly of sending every dime she has/gets to her nursing home, filling out and signing interminable Medicaid paperwork, and having her mail sent to my address.

The majority of that mail is junk clearly designed to trick gullible old f@rts into signing up for various "services" that will cost them money.

Prescription drug plans, chronic-care plans, Medicare supplement plans, who-knows-what plans sending her documents that read at first glance like she has already enrolled and just needs to “update” some (personal, financial) information and sign on the dotted line. Trouble is, she hasn't enrolled in any of them. I'm the only person who can enroll her in anything or sign on her behalf, so I know.

These crooked corporations wouldn't send out so many of these misleading mailings of there wasn't serious money to be made. How they can look at themselves in the mirror when they profit from bleeding old people on fixed incomes dry I will never know.

Well, there is one thing I can do besides feeding this crap to the shredder. I file mail fraud complaints with the United States Postal Inspection Service.

If you have any impaired oldsters you care about, please check their mail. Watch their accounts and investigate any irregularities. And when you find fraud attempts, please take a moment to report them. Hopefully, if enough complaints are filed some of these scam artists may end up getting shut down.

2 comments:

ParaPacem said...

Glad you are taking action; and in a more passive-aggresive manner, remember that each of the 'postage paid reply' envelopes costs the sender money to process... and the more weight, the more they pay. Sure, it is fine to fill them with ketchup packets, or old Kleenex, dried-up ballpoint pens, etc., and yes, some people paste the front of the reply envelope to, say, a plain brown wrapped telephopne directory from 1998, but others type out notes which create confusion... for example,
"thank you for your interest; my fecal ample ( or semen sample, sputum sample, whatever) will arrive separately, looking forward to my results! "

Anonymous said...

My aged parents had much the same thing happen to them, except it was phone solicitors. Once they got the bank account information, they passed the info around to all their crooked little slime buddies, and the home-printed checks for $399.99, $399.95, $395.67 started clearing Wachovia Bank. All just under $400 (felony) and none the exact same amount. I went to my parents' bank (rhymes with Bells Cargo) and asked them to stop taking checks that didn't have a wet signature. I was snottily informed, "That's NOT how modern banking's done!" After another month or so of this, I tried to close the account, and was snottily informed, "You can't close the account, it's overdrawn!" It's been in collection for a year now, after the slime ran the overcharges up to $42,000. Bells Cargo can just go whistle for that. They're getting NOTHING. Wachovia just settled a RICO on just exactly this issue, then got bought out by Bells Cargo. No wonder Bells Cargo has no interest in protecting its customers. It's fraud but local cops can't do anything because the perps are 3000 miles away. FBI doesn't care because it's not $250,000 or more. What a great country, leaving a WWII veteran and his wife destitute.