[legion]

All it takes is finding the right hook on the right person at the right time. Many new scams are designed to get you to let your guard down.

I got a phone call a few months ago, at 3:00 in the morning:

Me: "Hello?"

Caller: "Dude, I just got arrested. I need you to bail me out."

Me: "That's too bad."

I imagine you make that call enough, you run across someone whose friends might be the kind to get in trouble. The caller was trying to sound familiar. The call came in the middle of the night when I wasn't fully awake. The thing that saved me is that being the ***hole that I am, NO ONE would ever call me to get bailed out. Oh yeah, and being the ***hole that I am, there's no way I was helping the person, even if the call was legit.

I fell for a scam about 15 years ago. I got a phone call telling me that I'd won a free cell phone from my carrier. I googled the number, it was one registered with my carrier at the time (Nextel). They just needed to read a statement that I accepted the prize and verify the last four of my SSN. Turns, out, it was a bunch of employees at the local factory store that were running this scam, shipping the phones out, and swiping them off of porches. The victims were getting hit with huge bills after "ordering" as many as 5 new phones.