ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

We busted a scam today, which was kind of interesting but also a huge pain in the ass because the police had to come by and the whole debacle just took about forever. I called the real bank on the check instead of the phone number that actually appeared for the bank on the check. Real bank, fake number, fake check. The people at the real bank told me the check was bogus and advised me to phone the authorities. ROCK ON, so we did that and as it happened they were just down the street investigating some guy who was writing hot checks to grocery stores, so it took them about two seconds to get there. Three cheers for the KCKPD!

I still don’t know how the customer fell for it, although the bogus verification thing that the scam artists had set up was pretty clever. They’re obviously going to a lot of effort to legitimize their whole stupid operation, but I still don’t know why she fell for it. Some guy called her up and told her that she was guaranteed a prize winnings thing of $40,000 if she cashed this $4,850 check and wired the money back to Canada with the proceeds. Anybody with more than two neurons rubbing together in their skull might ask themselves a) Why would this person offer me something for absolutely nothing, b) How’d I win a prize when I never entered any contest or drawing? and even more importantly, c) Why would anybody want to send me money only to wire it straight back to them? But this customer evidently didn’t ask herself any of these key things. The lady cop who showed up said to her, “So what about this made you think that it was even remotely a good idea?” and the customer just said she had no idea what was going on so she just did what they told her. Good reasoning, lady. The cop told the lady she was “thinkin’ like a crackhead,” which I thought was pretty funny.

The detective eventually made it over and concluded (as had I) that the customer was merely an idiotic victim of the scam, as opposed to a willing perpetrator. He said I scored bonus points with him for having all my reports and everything already down in writing for him when he got there. I showed him my verifications and other documentation and he asked if he could get a copy of it, and I told him that he already had the copy I’d made for him. He looked genuinely surprised at meeting a semi-competent civilian, so that made me happy. As he left, the detective told the customer, “You’re damn lucky she caught this, or all this would have come back on YOU!” and pointed at her as he said this. She nodded quickly, and left in her rickety whitetrashmobile.

My boss came right over as soon as he heard that we’d busted a scam, but got there after the police had already left. We clued him in on everything, though, and debated whether the customer was merely stupid or had actually known and was just playing dumb. Since I’d actually talked to this lady and everything, I was pretty sure that her only real transgression was her state of willing semiretardation and a general lack of skepticism, but my boss thought she was maybe in on it. Either way, we agreed, the incident had probably scared her shitless and she was unlikely to do it again, especially since the police confiscated the check and all her paperwork for the agreement she had with the Canadian scam artists.

My head teller told me that our transfer girl’s stripper name is Angel. The unoriginality of this just pains me, although I figure that she probably picked it because it’s easy to remember. I’ve been working so hard on collection calls and trying to improve our bad debts, which are at an all-time low, that the head teller says I’m going to get burned out quickly if I keep it up. Maybe so, but I think that if I work really hard at it now it’ll make it easier later on down the road. If that makes any sense. I want this shit down pat and running like a well-oiled machine by the time we roll out the big loans for the new legislation that goes into effect July 1. It usually takes about a month or two for customers to accept changes to the routine, so I want to get all this strict new crap into the works by the time that shit comes around. We’re going to have enough on our hands at that point without having to worry about our collection techniques.