NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – They lie. They cheat. They steal. They defraud. And they have no conscience. We’re talking about a sophisticated, smooth-talking criminal underworld that, each year, cons tens of millions from unsuspecting victims worldwide. Ron Emmot, Resident Agent in Charge at Albuquerque’s Secret Service office, calls it “gut-wrenching.”
“I’ve known victims that have lost their homes, their pensions, their savings accounts,” Special Agent Emmot said. “These criminals, these fraudsters, I refer to them as scum of the earth,” University of New Mexico Professor Emeritus and fraud expert, Dr. Rich Brody, said.
Consider the heartbreaking case of a New Mexico widow living alone on a fixed income. We will call her “Stella.” That’s not her real name, but what happened to her was very real. Spend time with Stella, and you will come to know a gracious, good-hearted, trusting senior citizen. But all that changed last Fall when Stella’s world turned upside down after she became entangled in the cruelest con game of them all. It started with an early morning phone call from a man who called himself ‘Michael Allen’…