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CBSNews.com
Lottery
Scam Targets Elderly (continued)
"I was one of the best there was
at conning people out of their life savings over a telephone,"
says Foley, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He claims
he has scammed millions of dollars from his victims. "I am
currently awaiting sentencing on federal charges for my crimes,
and in a nine-month period, they estimate $7 million (U.S.)
-- and that's in nine months."
Foley says he's been conning people since 1995. "I always
wasn't as good as I was now, but I would have to say, $30-40-50
million, perhaps, I coaxed out of people's pockets."
He did it by playing on the American dream of instant wealth,
using kindness and patience to insinuate himself into the
lives of elderly and lonely people.
"I developed rapports with my customers. I called them my
clients, who were really the victims. I spoke to them every
day," says Foley.
"I had to make the person on the other end of the phone feel
like they were sitting in my office, but in a much smaller
chair on the other side of the desk. And I was the one who
controlled their destiny. I was the one who could change their
lives for them. I could make them happy."
Like most of Foley's victims, Elva Giddings, 77, lived alone
and had control over her own finances. But her biggest weakness
was that she liked to enter sweepstakes. She would fill out
forms she received in the mail and send them in, not realizing
that sponsors compile lists of people who respond and sell
them to telemarketers. The con men call them mooch lists.
That's how Foley got her number. When he called with news
that she had won a second prize and $240,000 dollars in a
big sweepstakes, Giddings wanted to believe her efforts had
finally paid off. Kroft played her a tape of that conversation:
"He was smooth, very smooth. Almost too smooth," says Giddings.
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