How Does the "Bank Examiner Swindle" Even Make Sense?

Question

How Does the "Bank Examiner Swindle" Even Make Sense?

In the 1960's, there was a Dragnet episode, and in the 1970's, I remember AARP articles, warning people about the "bank examiner" swindle. A glib-talking con artist, posing as a bank examiner, would approach an elderly person and tell him they were investigating a bank teller who was suspected of pilfering the accounts. The bank examiner needed the old person to withdraw money, so they could mark it, and then deposit it into the bank, so they could monitor the activities of the suspected teller.

How does this even make sense? The only way it could is if the bank kept each customer's money in a separate shoe box. If the teller is stealing the bank's money, they do not need anyone to withdraw money and then redeposit it. Are people so stupid as to fall for such a transparent hoax?

7 Answers7

MOST scams don't actually make sense if you put any thought into them.
They count on people NOT actually thinking about the claims an relying on the claimed 'authority' of the person conducting the scam. The term 'con' is short for confidence.
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Yes. It doesn't have to make sense. Not everyone thinks about it. It works when someone is so trusting that they just believe what they are told, and don't use common sense. As you can see from the other things posted on Yahoo Answers, that's a pretty common problem.
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It doesn't have to make sense. Why do people get calls from "IRS" stating if they don't pay a certain amount they will be jailed and then go to WalMart and buy gift cards in the amount 'IRS" claims they owe?

Human stupidity.
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What is transparent to some is NOT to others.

Everyday, I wonder how so many American taxpayers are okay being swindled by government (all three levels) for more than a third of their hard-earned money, and with hardly a fuss. But it's happening!
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people fall for scams because they have some scam in them,
"remember you can't cheat a honest man"
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The way most scams (and many legal sales pitches as well) work is that they manipulate the emotion of the intended victim. Greed or fear are the most common emotions appealed to. Their goal is to get you to feel such strong emotion that you make a decion based on emotion instead of sense.
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Yes people are. How does the "Nigerian Prince" scam make sense? The whole point of that is that a few people will fall for it and the person running it makes millions from those few. They lose nothing in approaching the person since almost no one would turn them in(and the few that WOULD report them don't know who the person actually is in your example).

How Does the "Bank Examiner Swindle" Even Make Sense?

7 Answers7

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