Can scam victims get justice?

[00:00:00] When it's under 50,000, it's much harder to put the resources into it because the punishments just simply aren't there. You know, there's been many a case we worked on where our prosecutors put more hours into the case than the person spent in jail on some of these minor crimes. So you spend 100 hours prosecuting a case to get somebody 24 hours in jail and the math just doesn't work.

[00:00:36] If you've been scammed, is it likely you'll get justice? The answer, sadly, is no. There are many reasons for this and we're about to discuss them, but the answer comes down to you. What do you believe justice looks like? If your child were kidnapped and killed, you'd probably prefer a long, slow, painful death for the murderer.

[00:01:03] Emotion suggests that's justice, but we have courts to ensure justice is fair, consistent, and not based solely on emotion. But in less serious cases, cases where your money was stolen, what would justice look like to you? The arrest of a person who scammed you? Simple restitution?

[00:01:27] Oath? Or something more extreme like imprisonment at hard labor? I'm Jim Grinstead, and today we're going to talk about why so few scam victims get justice of any kind. When you get them off the record, many police will acknowledge that their success at solving serious crimes comes down to luck and witnesses willing to talk. The Ellery Queens, Columbos, and Matlocks of the world rarely exist,

[00:01:57] and the types of crimes they solve are even more rare. Perry Mason may have rarely solved a case if not for some witness who realized their moral failings and confessed. Still, we hear this from police. There's a 13-letter word that begins with E that dictates victims in this country, and it is embarrassment. Nobody wants to be embarrassed in front of their friends. It's going to get out. Some of these communities have little

[00:02:26] community papers, and in the newspaper it'll say blotter or police blotter, and my name's going to appear in the paper. I'm going to look stupid. I'm going to look stupid to my neighbors. They don't report, and that's a big, big problem for us. When they do report, they're going to distort the facts for you because they don't want to come off looking as stupid. You're not going to get the absolute truth from these people. You need to keep delving into them, and if you catch

[00:02:55] inconsistencies in their statement, challenge them. Go back. Are you sure it happened this way? Moments later, former president of the National Association of Bunko Investigators, Dale Morgan, said, in Chicago in 1998, we were getting murdered by these utility imposter burglars. So we went to the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, and Chicago PD has much more call than any of us did,

[00:03:23] and then we said, we're getting murdered by these cons. Can you put something in the newspaper about you don't send people to doors, postures? Oh, we can do that. Great. Be in the paper next week. Well, we thought it'd be down by the obituaries, but it was actually on page three. Con Edison warns of imposters. Wow. Great title. First paragraph. Con Wolf Edison is warning the citizens of this metropolitan area that we will

[00:03:53] never send anybody cold calling on your door. Wow. A shout out to the press. It almost makes me feel proud. Ten minutes later, they threw me out of the conference. The program is intended to teach police officers about travelers, groups of con artists that travel from community to community, running scams until police realize they're there. I was invited to the conference. I spent about $1,500

[00:04:22] to attend and showed up on time. None of that mattered. They just wanted me gone. In the portion of the program that I did get to hear, the tone was familiar. The victims were stupid, but we must console them. I also heard a condescension toward the victims that blamed their age and the changing times. These may be issues, but being a senior does not make someone

[00:04:48] stupid. In my view, the police should be investigating a crime, not judging a victim. The seminar was about travelers, and there will be an episode about them later this season, regardless of what the National Association of Bunko Investigators may prefer.

[00:05:13] It's information you need to know. So what's the point of this? Justice. Victims deserve justice, and police are a vital part of that process. I was denied access because supposedly secret tactics would be discussed. The USB stick handed

[00:05:37] out to the convention attendees offered clues about those secrets. Those clues included seven Better Business Bureau press releases, a list of companies that spoofed telephone calls, a history of traveler communities, and an Ireland driver's license guide. I found most of the data on the drive by myself online later with very little work.

[00:06:08] So why am I spending time on this? I say again, it's about justice, or lack thereof. Police are committed to stopping con artists, but they have limited resources. Scam victims willingly hand over their money, and it doesn't matter what story they were told to convince them to do so. When I would first encounter a crime victim, one of the first things that I would explain to them

[00:06:34] is that justice is going to be what you tell me it is. So for some people who are victims of a scam, they might say, I need to get that money back. This is irreplaceable money. And so restitution would be justice, a big part of justice. On the other hand, there are folks that are more upset at being the victim of a crime than they might be over the lost money, especially when the amount of money

[00:07:02] lost has been relatively small. Let's say the scam was caught early. They want punishment. They want retribution. And so for those people, I would say that justice is catching the people, incarcerating them, and making them pay a price for whatever horrible ordeal they put the victim through.

[00:07:28] That's Matthew Stowe, a former prosecutor who's known for his focus on scams and their impact on individuals. Which is not to say he didn't step up and go face to face with some pretty big crime rings as well. His area of responsibility included five poor rural counties where victims really needed his help. In this area, there's a lot of overlap between families and gangs. Benton County was famous

[00:07:54] for being the entire county was run by one criminal gang, which also happened to be a family for decades. It was called the Bruces was the name of the family. Their crimes are well known and documented. They all got fair punishment except for the single worst one of the bunch who was pardoned by a governor who sold pardons. Trying to deal with him was a big part of what I was doing there. But for the most part,

[00:08:24] it was a family. But they were also a gang. So it was really both. They were coextensive. They were a corrupt criminal enterprising family. Now, after that family left, it left a power vacuum and Mexican cartels moved in as they have in most of the counties. So most of the crimes, the organized crimes that I was dealing with were cartel related. And to a lesser extent, street gang related because

[00:08:52] the American street gangs are largely knowingly or unknowingly the pawns that are played with by the Mexican drug cartels that have all the money. So we had vice lords. We had gangster disciples. We had a number of those gangs there, too. And all of them ran scams. Many prosecutors aren't willing to put in the time to bring a case to court. So victims end up paying investigators to find out who robbed them.

[00:09:18] In Vicki Semsh's eyes. This is a failed system, is what it is. Because after all of this and hundreds of dollars spent, she never saw a dime despite winning her small claims case. An all too common story in conciliation court. So you can win and yet not really win. Attorney Beth Goodell with Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid has worked with frustrated clients over the years. I warn them that even if we

[00:09:48] win in court, they may never see the money because it's a very complicated process. Conciliation court exists to let consumers settle smaller disputes without having to pay an attorney. This is the problem. Vicki turned to the court after she says a concrete contractor hired to redo her garage floor and driveway did a poor job and damaged her home and fence in the process. But before the court could hear her case, she had to find him to serve papers.

[00:10:17] He had two addresses, so it was really hard to know where we should serve him. So we did everything two times. Unsuccessful, she spent 700 bucks on a private investigator just to track him down. In court, she won. Good news, right? Was that just the start of the process, getting the judgment? Yes. I thought that we were just going to get judgment and here we go. And instead, we were given another piece of paper, but the clerk standing behind handed it to me and just said, I am so sorry.

[00:10:46] Why so sorry? That's because after you win, there are seven more steps to go through just to get the money you're owed. And each one costs you more. First, you've got to docket the judgment, basically tell the court you won. Then request something called an order for disclosure, followed by an order to show cause. It goes on and on. More documents, a trip to the sheriff's

[00:11:10] office. Sound confusing? He's supposed to tell us where his money is and how he's going to pay us. And as Vicki discovered, if the person who ripped you off doesn't want to be found, you're out of luck. Her contractor dodged her again and again. Each time, she paid the sheriff $80 to try to give him these legal papers. But eventually, tired of throwing good money after

[00:11:33] bad, she just gave up. Despite that court order, the crook won. It serves them better than it serves us. And I think they're smart enough to know how to get around the system. That was KARE in Minneapolis. There are far more victims than most law enforcement agencies think, and fewer resources available to help them. Major law enforcement agencies want to focus on large organizations because by cutting off

[00:12:00] the head, they stop a lot of smaller crimes. It's logical for really large organizations, but not for smaller enterprises. Someone once said to me, Matt, there was a sheriff in your area that said with one box of .22 ammunition, he could fix every problem in this district. And I'm not advocating vigilante justice, but what I am saying is that's the number of people in the whole district that were

[00:12:29] causing problems. Most crime is repeat crime, and most criminals commit crimes over and over again there's not as much rehabilitation as I wish there was in a perfect world. As I've talked about in other episodes, con artists rarely work alone. In some way, they're part of a larger organization that can provide support such as bail and legal backing.

[00:12:54] Those who are arrested are needed back on the street to keep making money. Those larger supporting organizations can run from large cartels to local sheriffs and judges who control several counties. In those cases, law enforcement especially needs luck and savvy citizens. Once we've had somebody face-to-face, if we've got a description, if we've got a license plate, if we've got something we can work off of, the odds of getting justice are pretty good. They'd be above

[00:13:24] 50 percent in that world. Which is not to say Stowe found federal officials unhelpful. When he had potential evidence, they were very willing to help. Shockingly, I was able to get the attention of the FBI and DEA when I was able to do it, even being from a small county. I have a lot of respect, not for the very, very tippy tops of those, not for the political folks in those organizations. I'm not saying I have

[00:13:51] a lot of respect for them as a former politician myself. But the rank and file people on the ground, there were some really great agents that I worked with. And so below the political level, there are some great people there that want to help. But yes, we had virtually, we had very little resources when I started there to prosecute crimes in every meaningful way. When I first took office, I computed that based on the number of crimes that occurred and the number of prosecutors I had,

[00:14:18] we had 10 seconds per crime to prosecute when I started. And I think by the time I was done bringing resources back to the district, I think we had about a minute per crime to prosecute if we divided all of our time up equally between the crimes. It was very just shocking, shocking numbers. Those aren't the exact numbers, but that's the feel of it. So we needed, we definitely needed more resources. And it is a huge

[00:14:48] problem because when someone has 10 seconds to do, and I'm talking about the whole crime here from discovery to plea bargaining negotiations to the trial, all has to occur in 10 seconds. You're not going to do a great job on your average case. Now we, of course, would spend the time that it took to do each crime and just try to make up time where we could, but it was absolutely, it was absolutely exhausting.

[00:15:14] And that is one of the things that makes it very difficult to help people. Things are better now than they were in 2014, which is when I took office, but they're still very challenging. Still, to get that cooperation takes a prosecutor willing to work the political system, and that's rare. In my experience, prosecutors are either political animals wanting to move up the ladder or those dedicated to law enforcement and who set themselves apart from politics.

[00:15:42] That second group rarely gets far in politics, but are usually re-elected year after year because they get the job done. They're working for justice, not personal gain. Stowe strikes me as someone who believed justice was his way up the ladder and was fortunate enough to be in situations that helped his career. I also went to Nashville, and I think a lot of the reason I'm a former prosecutor now, I lost my primary, was I was from a poor area and I spent a lot of time in Nashville.

[00:16:11] I was down there getting the resources back to our district. When I left office, we had double the number of prosecutors district-wide as when I started. And nobody, believe me, wanted to send more resources to rural West Tennessee. Nobody is sitting around on a pile of money in Nashville thinking, hey, how can I send this out to a place I've never heard of to help people I'm never going to meet? To get that money, you've got to go down there, you have to forge the connections, you've got to be helpful. I did a lot in terms of drafting

[00:16:41] legislation, helping other people draft legislation. If I helped a member of the legislature draft a bill, they would remember who I was. And then I would come back and say, you know, my district, people are hurting. You need to help. But how about you? Are you able to avoid a scammer? A new survey from Citi, C-I-T-I,

[00:17:04] found 90% of respondents believe they can identify and prevent financial scams. But more than a quarter of the 2,300 who took part in the online poll had already been victims, with 32% of tech-savvy Gen Zs the most likely to agree, despite a recent report showing seniors are at high risk of cyber crimes.

[00:17:35] So the answer to the question of whether you can get justice if you're scammed is sadly, no, it's not likely you will. These investigations take a lot of resources, resources that even medium-sized cities can't afford because of the number of victims and criminals involved. Plus there are other crimes, usually violent crimes that require investigation. The best defense here is a good defense.

[00:18:04] Don't let yourself be put in a situation where you can be scammed. Starting with this season, I'll be including a link to a podcast episode on how to protect yourself from scammers. It's intended to be a reference to remind yourself how scammers operate. And I'll update the episode from time to time as their techniques change so you'll be ready when a scammer tries to take advantage of you. It's a tool built for you. Please use it.

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[00:19:04] That's p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com. I'll include a link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.