"If you're on the outside looking in, you may wonder how perfectly intelligent, seasoned adults can fall for this garbage," said Tom Silver, one of hundreds of readers who commented on The Wall Street Journal's recent article about a Florida woman who lost $25,000 to impostors posing as deputies. They claimed she had missed jury duty, and threatened jail time unless she paid a fine. "Believe me, it's easier than you would ever think," added Silver, who recently lost money to a different ruse.
We heard from finance professionals, doctors, lawyers and many others who have been jolted or taken in by tricksters. Here is a selection of their comments, lightly edited for space and clarity.
'The guy had really done his homework'
The jury duty scam targeted David Schwind's daughter, but initially fooled him, too.
"The caller was VERY convincing," Schwind recalled. "He was confident, his accent matched the local area, he knew tons about my daughter and about me -- the guy had really done his homework. All of the normal questions of 'what's your badge number?' and so on were answered immediately and without hesitation."
Schwind's googling, though, revealed holes in the story. "The name the guy provided was very close to the name of an actual member of the (local sheriff's) department...but the real member of the department was a completely different race and ethnic background," he said.
Schwind then called the real officer. "It was scary -- the scammer was really good."
Francis Skilling, a physician and longtime subscriber who got a fake credit-card text and returned the call, marveled at the scammer's professional-sounding patter. Skilling canceled the card before losing money, but the company's fraud department explained why tricksters are so good: practice.
"She told me that scammers will call the company several times a day to learn the protocols and language that the legitimate company uses," he said.
Empathy -- and advice
Many readers wanted to assure Kimberly Fudge, the subject of the WSJ article, that she wasn't alone. So-called panic scams can work by triggering stress responses that shift victims into fight-or-flight, clouding rational thought, according to cybersecurity experts.
"I have a great deal of empathy for Kimberly," said Jo Baxter. "I fell for the same scam five years ago. I only lost $500 because a sharp store employee convinced me it was a scam when I was trying to buy another gift card. I am an educated person who was shocked that I could fall for a scam. Needless to say, I am mighty careful now."
For Sally Higgins, "just reading Kimberly's story brings back the ickiness in my stomach." She lost $4,000 through the same scam.
"I knew better, but they were smooth scammers," Higgins wrote. "I was frightened and frenzied, which is what con artists use to get our hard-earned cash."
"What a crushing experience!" wrote Christopher Donovan, a veteran of the financial-services industry. "This very same scam nearly got me last year. They had me on the phone for nearly 30 minutes when I googled 'jury duty scam' and immediately stuff popped up. I hung up -- shaken and upset."
Readers offered plenty of advice to one another: hang up, call authorities, avoid unknown numbers and skip random links and texts. If you buy a refurbished phone like Fudge's, restore it to factory settings before use, experts say.
"The most important thing is to say, 'Stop. Breathe," one reader suggested. "A 10-minute wait will not make a difference if it's real."
Jury duty is among many ruses tricksters use. David Stanwick got a phony IRS email that said the agency was "having trouble processing my refund (I'm not owed one) and that I need to log in and provide additional information."
"The email looked pretty good," he recalled. Its header, though, showed it came from his address, with IRS.GOV substituted.
'Scammers are getting better'
Chris Petruzzi said his eagle eyes also saved him. "I have never fallen for a financial scam in my 75 years of life, but the scammers are getting better," he wrote. After paying for airport parking by credit card, he got an email saying he had overpaid and was owed a refund -- they just needed his card number.
"I was so eager to get the refund that I ALMOST responded," he said. "I then noticed that two of the letters in the website in their link to give the credit card number were reversed."
J. Taylor, targeted by the same jury-duty trick as Fudge, thought he would be the last to fall for a scam. "I have always been gifted with a hair-trigger scam detector," he said. "I'm mortified to say, however, I fell hard for this one."
"This is an elaborate, well thought-out ruse which totally jammed my radar," Taylor wrote, noting the caller's attention to detail, including "real cop-speak."
"But when it came to the payment details my natural suspicions began to quickly reboot," he said. He told the crook, still on the line, he was driving to the police station. The scammer warned that officers would be waiting to arrest him.
"Fine," Taylor replied. "I'll look forward to meeting them."
"Game over," he recalled, "but I was shaken."
-- Photo credits: Tom Silver; Francis Skilling; Helene Baxter