I scan the headlines of quite a few newspapers online and often I’m struck by how unbelievable many of these stories are. They’re true - just unbelievable.
No - I’m not talking about Charlie Sheen! There’s quite enough of that.
A recent story in my own town concerned a 48-year-old man who for the past two and a half years has been in an online relationship with a woman who didn’t exist. How was this revealed? Well, the alleged woman claimed to have been kidnapped and asked for more money. The man went to the police who after a fairly easy internet search found that the picture of the alleged woman was from a sample driver’s license for the state of Florida. The man was devastated to find out that she didn’t really exist but I suspect that the more than $200,000.00 he sent whomever it was at least added fuel to the fire of his anguish.
Then there’s the woman who in her early fifties has cashed in her life savings, her retirement accounts, sold her house and moved to a different state following a guy she just met who has promised her the world as long as she cashed everything in so they could start a new life together. She resists all attempts from her children and her siblings to make sure she’s okay- in fact she’s down right hostile when they ask how she’s doing now that she’s followed this guy to another state.
As writers we try to create believable characters that the reader can relate to but in real life, the people - or the characters - described above make you want to shake them until they come to their senses.
I mean, really, who does this stuff? Well, more people than you can possibly imagine.
One common element, despite gender or race, or even socioeconomic status seems to be age. Most of these bizarre and unbelievable behaviors tend to happen when someone is in their late forties into the mid-fifties. We often dismiss this as a mid-life crisis but a psychological perspective indicates that it may be in response to childhood trauma of some sort.
Whatever the reason is, writers often have to create characters more believable than real people. Truth really is stranger than fiction.
Showing posts with label scams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scams. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Tax Scams Cometh
As if the pain of filing our taxes wasn’t enough we now have to experience the onslaught of nefarious attempts to exploit our anxiety about correctly filing and paying our income taxes.
I’ve already received dozens of spam and phishing emails over the course of the past few months from evil doers - probably some kid in Russia - trying to convince me to accept their offer to help me receive more money in my federal income tax return. After all, the word stimulus is all over the news and those of us struggling to stay afloat in this wretched economy would love nothing better than some good financial news right now.
But as they say - BUYER BEWARE. All is not as it seems.
To that end, the IRS has a list of what they fondly call their Dirty Dozen where they highlight tax scams. They do this every year - here’s the link for the 2009 list:
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=206370,00.html
(Note: If you have problems with the link just search on 2009 Dirty Dozen at www.irs.gov.)
The scams range from Fuel Tax Credit and Hiding Income Offshore to Abuse of Charitable Organizations and Deductions. As you can tell from the topics some of these might even seem plausible to most people, after all, there are tax benefits to donating money to charities and even some energy tax credits. But these scams are fiction. They take a kernel of sometimes truthful information and twist it to get a certain outcome. It’s not lost on me that as fiction writers we often attempt to do the same thing.
To educate and protect yourself against tax scams do check out the IRS website, particularly the link above. But when you find a good piece of fiction to read, enjoy the ride because there is one major difference between fiction writers and scammers - we let you know up front that we’re taking you for a ride, and one we hope you’ll enjoy and come out on the other end of that ride feeling that you got your moneys worth for the price of the read. So, keep your fictional experiences to reading a good book.
I’ve already received dozens of spam and phishing emails over the course of the past few months from evil doers - probably some kid in Russia - trying to convince me to accept their offer to help me receive more money in my federal income tax return. After all, the word stimulus is all over the news and those of us struggling to stay afloat in this wretched economy would love nothing better than some good financial news right now.
But as they say - BUYER BEWARE. All is not as it seems.
To that end, the IRS has a list of what they fondly call their Dirty Dozen where they highlight tax scams. They do this every year - here’s the link for the 2009 list:
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=206370,00.html
(Note: If you have problems with the link just search on 2009 Dirty Dozen at www.irs.gov.)
The scams range from Fuel Tax Credit and Hiding Income Offshore to Abuse of Charitable Organizations and Deductions. As you can tell from the topics some of these might even seem plausible to most people, after all, there are tax benefits to donating money to charities and even some energy tax credits. But these scams are fiction. They take a kernel of sometimes truthful information and twist it to get a certain outcome. It’s not lost on me that as fiction writers we often attempt to do the same thing.
To educate and protect yourself against tax scams do check out the IRS website, particularly the link above. But when you find a good piece of fiction to read, enjoy the ride because there is one major difference between fiction writers and scammers - we let you know up front that we’re taking you for a ride, and one we hope you’ll enjoy and come out on the other end of that ride feeling that you got your moneys worth for the price of the read. So, keep your fictional experiences to reading a good book.
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