Droves of social workers and therapists are being targeted by smooth-talking phone scammers that, through fear and manipulation, have stolen money from them under the pretense of posting bail, according to an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle.
One such victim is Jaime Bardacke, a licensed clinical social worker, who was fleeced her of thousands of dollars after receiving a call from someone this past June, claiming to be a member of law enforcement.
Her ordeal lasted over six hours, pushing her to drive all over the Bay Area while on the phone with this scammer.
"He held me hostage with no gun but with his words," Bardacke said. "I never expected a call on a Sunday night to be from a sociopath."
Phone scams are nothing new, but they have been on the rise in the last eighteen months as the pandemic has created new conditions ripe for conning. A whopping 59.4 million Americans lost $29.8 billion to phone scammers in a 12-month span from March 2020 to March 2021, according to a report from Truecaller, based on a survey by the Harris Poll.
In comparison, in 2019 43 million Americans lost $10.5 billion to phone scams, according to the same poll for that year. The lockdown isolation and virus anxiety has made people more vulnerable. Although the assumption is that the elderly are more perceptible to this issue, people ages 18 to 44 fell prey most often.
And while some are clearly fake, like robocalls from the bank, some are incredibly sophisticated.
"Grifters are amateur psychologists," said Alan Castel, a UCLA psychology professor who studied scams for his book "Better With Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging."
"They understand that people respond to social influences, especially to authority," Castel said. "They know people don’t use all their cognitive resources when they’re stressed. They know that if you can rush people, scare people, they’ll become hyper-focused on trying to solve a problem. Fraudsters create a powerful situation that induces compliance."
Bardacke’s scammer claimed to be a Lt. Timothy Reird from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, saying she had failed to testify at a trial after having signed a subpoena saying she would appear. Now there was an order to arrest her for contempt of court, he told her.
"I was immediately concerned because I have been subpoenaed as an expert witness as part of my work," she said. "I knew this could affect the status of my license. My whole livelihood depends on that."
Bardacke told the man she’d never received a subpoena. He told her she needed to come to the sheriff’s office in Redwood City to sign her name to prove that her signature had been forged. Once she’d done so, she could be on her way, he said.
The name and address he’d given her checked out after Bardacke conducted a quick Google search.
The caller told Bardacke it was a federal case and a judge had issued a gag order so he couldn’t say more about it. He had the authority to bring her in and clear up the matter, but she would need to post bail with the federal government that would be reimbursed once they proved her signature was forged.
Over their conversation, she could hear the ambient sound of phones ringing, people talking, in the background that sounded like he was in a police station.
"I was taken aback, but I was like, ‘OK,’" she said. "He said it was $6,000 bail, and I said I didn’t have that amount here. He said, ‘That’s OK, I can tell you how to get it and you’ll be reimbursed as soon as you come into the station and verify.’"
Bardacke felt that was a red flag. She said she wanted to call a friend who’s a lawyer.
But he dissuaded her. "I’m sorry but once you’re on the phone with me, you’re not allowed to get off because you’re considered a flight risk," she recalls him saying. "This phone call is being monitored and you’re not allowed to send a text message or make any calls about this case because it’s in violation of the gag order."
She shouldn’t think of contacting the police either, he said.
"He said if I had any interaction with a police officer, I would be taken into custody and held at least 72 hours before the warrant could be lifted," she said. "I couldn’t go to the police, call the police, set foot on police property until I posted this bond; otherwise I would be taken into custody."
The request seemed outrageous, but Bardacke has had clients who were forced to spend time behind bars because they couldn’t post bail.
"If you want to spend 72 hours in jail, that’s your choice,” the man kept saying. “I can stop helping you."
Therapists around the country are being targeted in this type of scam. Victims are all women, many of whom list their work cell phone numbers on a website for people seeking therapists. (Some were actually notified by the site that someone had requested their contact information the same day the calls came.) The scammer is always man with a confident tone of authority. He tells them they are in legal trouble, but he can help them avoid jail time if they pay a fine or bail. He coaches them to buy gift cards.
The Chronicle interviewed four other Bay Area therapists who recounted very similar calls to the one that targeted Bardacke.
"I have been date-raped in my life, and this felt just as violating as that did," said one of the women who was granted anonymity in accordance with The Chronicle’s policy on anonymous sources. "It was emotionally and psychologically violating and traumatic."
The scammer guided Bardacke through his process – get in the car and drive out to the ATM, take out as much cash as she could, then use that to buy prepaid Visa gift cards from drugstores. She was to put them in envelopes and then send the cards via designated mailboxes that had arrangements with the Department of Treasury to serve as direct drop boxes. She wouldn’t need to put postage on the envelope; just his name and badge number would suffice, he said.
He directed her where to find one of the mailboxes. It was just a regular blue U.S. Postal Service mailbox.
Right before she put a card in the mailbox, he had her read him the card number, scratch off the covering on the PINs and read those aloud too.
Once she had used up her cash, she should use her credit cards to buy the prepaid Visa cards, he said. She visited a 7-Eleven, a Target, a CVS, another Safeway. At each, the routine was the same: Buy the cards, drive around seeking the special mailboxes, then read him the numbers.
Prepaid cards are popular with scammers because they are easy to buy and have few consumer protections, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Out of 556,792 fraud reports to the FTC for "imposter scams" — a criminal who pretends to be someone else — made from January to June, the top payment method was gift cards or reloading cards. The top contact method was a phone call.
About 14% of those half-million people reported losing money, totaling some $974.6 million in all, with a median loss of $1,000.
Imposter scams are surging, the agency says. In the second quarter of this year, almost a quarter of a million were reported, more than double the 91,000 at the same time last year.
Bardacke finished buying the $6,000 worth of prepaid cards after 11 p.m. the night she began the ordeal. Now she just had to go to the Sheriff’s Office in Redwood City.
But the man had another tactic up his sleeve. "He said, ‘Before you get here, I want to warn you, you’ll be subject to a strip search and cavity search when you arrive,’" Bardacke said. "‘And we don’t have a female officer here so I’ll be doing it.’"
Bardacke panicked, she couldn’t do that. The man offered that instead of an in-person search, she could undress in a bathroom at a nearby drugstore and take a video herself doing the search. He gave her a .gov email address to send it to.
She tried at a nearby CVS, but couldn’t go through with it. She decided he’d just have to search her in person.
She drove to the address he’d given her in Redwood City. But it was closed, it was a daytime office.
She called him and there was no answer.
"And that’s when I knew," she said.
Bardacke is not alone. This has been happening to several therapists around the country, the state, and the Bay Area.
Therapists might be targeted for a few reasons. One is that a threat to a therapist’s license is a powerful motivator because their livelihood depends on that. Another is that many therapists are committed to trying to understand other people and see their humanity.
"There’s an empathy therapists have that I think can get easily exploited," Bardacke said.
And it’s difficult to find and prosecute these types of criminals.
"Tracking down and identifying suspects for crimes like this is the most difficult aspect of the investigation," said SFPD spokesperson Officer Robert Rueca. While the department's goal is to catch the scammers, they also aim to educate the public and prevent others from falling victim to the grift.
"Any person can be susceptible to one of these scams," said Castel, the UCLA professor. "It’s not just lonely older people. It’s often very intelligent, rational people who are looking to solve a problem. Victims aren’t necessarily gullible, ignorant or uneducated; often it is the exact opposite."
Castel said people who are willing to speak up publicly are doing a service by helping spread awareness.
Which is why Bardacke decided to share her story.
"If even a few people can be saved from this, it’s worth it," she said. "The only way these people get away with this is because it’s not talked about because of the shame involved. It’s a crime where information is the only thing that will save you."
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