November 14, 2026
In Bruce’s own words from Facebook:
Scam Alert! I meant to post about this sooner, but…Anyway, on Wednesday, someone tried to scam me. This was a variation on one that’s been going around a while, and in retrospect I was surprised how close it came to tricking me. My phone rang, which is unusual in itself, and I saw a 720 (Denver area) number. I answered, thinking it could easily be someone I knew in the area. The voice was female, so distraught I couldn’t understand much of anything she said. I said a few times that I couldn’t understand anything she was saying, and she finally was clear enough to say she’d been in an accident. My knee-jerk reaction was that only <daughter> would be calling me about that. I asked if she was OK, didn’t get a clear response, asked if she’d already called 911, got a clear “yes”, then something about “he wants to talk to you”. OK, switched to a male, unknown, I first thought maybe a first responder. His first question was whether I was “a family member”, because it was going to be a private conversation. I should, at that point, asked “family member of who?”, since I didn’t actually know that it was <daughter> had nothing but assumption for that. But I went with my assumption and said I was her father. He asked if I was in the same city, so I could come get her, to which I should have responded by asking “what city?”, but instead said no, I was in Alabama. He then wanted to make sure I was alone, which is weird, and I said her mother was also there. He wanted me to go somewhere private, and I said it was as private as it was going to be. He became increasingly antagonistic, wouldn’t answer any questions about who he was, or even come right out and say what he wanted, though he said something about getting me to tell her not to talk to police (!), and something vague about it being a “wrong place, wrong time” situation. He even said he had her in his car, which is odd and a bit threatening. I was getting more and more skeptical of the whole situation. Fairly early in the conversation, I’d gotten Julia to try to call <daughter>. She tried, didn’t get an answer (no surprise), *she was at work and doesn’t answer her phone at work -J* and also texted her. After a bit more that didn’t make sense, I said that it was looking more and more like a scam, and he said he had no idea what that meant. Not “no, this isn’t a scam, this is serious”, but “I don’t know what a scam is”. He asked repeatedly if I wanted to help, and I kept telling him that I did, but he still didn’t say what he actually wanted. I think he must have decided by this point that whatever the specific scam, I wasn’t going to fall for it, and he hung up on me. After the call, Julia and I talked about it, and realized it was even sketchier than it had sounded <daughter>…would call Julia if anything. She also wouldn’t know my number by heart, so she couldn’t have given it to someone else. The number called from was not hers. Having him talk about keeping the police out of it, after she’d said she’d called 911 made no sense. Not having her spend enough time on the phone with me to let me ask much from her directly was weird. Refusing to answer any questions about who he was, what happened, etc was very suspicious. Logically, the whole thing screamed “scam”, but I responded, as too many do, to a frantic-sounding voice and claims of emergency with assumptions and acceptance.
I think we’re all, to some extent, susceptible to scams. Some more than others, of course. If I get another call like this, I’ll treat it differently, and advise others to do similarly.
- Early on, ask who it is who’s calling, don’t assume.
- If the person claims to be someone you know, before they pass the call off to someone else, ask some question(s) to confirm their identity.
- When they ask if you’re nearby, establish their location. No honest person would refuse to clearly answer that, if they’re truly wondering if you’re near. How could you know if you don’t know “near to where”?
- I shouldn’t have told him that I thought it sounded like a scam. That was giving him a reason to put up his own defenses. Then again, aside from ending the interaction once it was clearly a scam, there wasn’t a great option.
I hope this helps someone else avoid getting scammed. There are so many scams out there, so many ways to be cheated. When the call came, we were just about to go out to eat, so after it that’s what we did. At some point during our meal, Julia got a text response from <daughter> saying that no, it wasn’t her, and everything was fine. By this point, we were pretty confident, but it was still good to know for sure.
