I’ve written about this repeatedly based on my interactions with old people… the U.S. desperately needs a simple-to-establish bank account, with associated credit card, that can be supervised by a second person. This would be useful for some young people, but it would be primarily for the elderly to prevent them from being cheated out of their savings and Social Security. The idea is that they could enter into small transactions at reliable merchants without restriction, but if they try to buy something over a threshold amount or transfer funds over a threshold, an Account Protector’s approval is sought, e.g., via text message “Grandma is trying to pay $700 for diet pills advertised online. Press 1 to approve.”
‘Gold Grifters’: Inside the growing scam using couriers to pick up gold bars from victims is a recent ABC story:
Kris Owen, a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran, had planned to spend his golden years in Indiana with his wife, Karen. They wanted to spend more time with his son and travel the world together.
Owen received a pop-up message on his computer in 2023 saying that his personal information was compromised — and was told to call a phone number.
When he did, an individual posing as a federal agent said they would safeguard his money and instructed him to convert some of his savings into gold bars, Owen told ABC News. After weeks of communications and after receiving what he thought was a letter from the FBI, Owen purchased $80,000 worth of gold bars.
“They told me to wrap it in a box … with Christmas wrap paper,” Owen said.
He then took his gold to a grocery store parking lot near his house, he said, expecting to hand it over to a federal agent so the gold could be kept in a secure location. A car soon pulled up next to Owen and he placed the gold in the back seat before the driver took off.
The FBI and a local Indiana police department had Owen go undercover to try to catch an individual who was supposed to receive $50,000 from him. Owen, wearing a wire, met with the individual at a parking lot and placed a box with fake cash in the individual’s back seat.
Law enforcement followed the individual, who they later identified as Abdul Mohammed, and took him in for questioning. He was charged by federal prosecutors with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and two counts of wire fraud.
Mohammed, who later fled the country, was a courier — an individual recruited to pick up gold bars or cash from victims, according to law enforcement officials.
(Our government tortures airlines and private pilots with APIS and eAPIS manifests of who is on every outbound flight and all passengers’ passport details and yet Abdul Mohammed was able to easily leave after being arrested, charged, and then released by our revolving door justice system?)
In an exclusive phone interview, ABC News spoke to a suspected courier from jail as he faces charges in two states for his alleged involvement in gold bar schemes.
Yash Shah, 27, who was originally charged with multiple felonies in 2023 related to the scam, claims he does not know where the gold is going. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years probation, but he was arrested again last November for his alleged involvement in a Maryland case. He is currently being held without bond in a New York detention facility.
“I’m not a criminal or anything like that,” Shah told ABC News. “I’m just a normal person. They [were] just saying … if you wanna make a little more money, you have to go pick up the package, and you have to just drop it over there. That’s it.”
Shah claims he was hired by someone from India and was paid between $800 and $4,000 to pick up packages, some which contained gold bars. His attorney, Nicholas Ramcharitar, said Shah took between five and 10 trips traveling all over the Northeast as a courier.
Mr. Shah wasn’t suspicious when offered 50X what UPS charges for the same service because… he is not a criminal?
What’s the LLM angle?
“These tech support pop-ups that initiate the whole scam emanate from a call center in India,” Delzotto said. “So we have a lot of focus on India with [a lot of] these illegitimate call centers.”
LLMs will be a lot more successful at fooling us than Indian humans (they still say “the reason of my call” instead of “the reason for my call”), so the bleeding out of American wealth to scammers around the world is likely to intensify. Right now our banking system has only two modes: (1) you’re a fully capable adult who can distinguish Agent Abdul Mohammed from a real FBI agent, (2) you’re a mental vegetable who can’t buy socks at Amazon and all of your money is held in trust and the bank takes instructions from the trustee(s). But a typical 79-year-old doesn’t fit well into either of these modes. He/she/ze/they is, one hopes, nearly capable of Mode 1 banking, but some kind of second signature or text message approval or something should be required before $80,000 is withdrawn.
Related, a March 2024 New Yorker story:
The old people getting scammed abound, nowadays. At 75 the lion kingdom’s old man began routinely saying “give away your assets, you don’t deserve any assets because you were a below average student” & randomly trying to dispose of assets. Wouldn’t know who the caretaker would be, except another AI model. In modern marriages, men are the breadwinners & women sign their letters in X’s & O’s.
The issue you present affects not only the elderly; a substantial number of American adults (millions) have very low IQs and yet retain full capacity to engage in legal commercial transactions. This clearly exposes them to fraud and abuse. I believe most legal systems provide forms of partial tutelage to help mitigate this problem. An important consideration, however, is that many people who need such tutelage do not have a trusted person available to take on that responsibility.
I was visiting with my 87-y/o father yesterday, when he received a call on his cell phone. Expecting a call from his doctor, he answered only to be greeted with a hard sell from a local Toyota dealer offering to buy his one-year old Toyota at “$10,000 over Blue Book value! Come in and speak to Sarah” My father is now very excited about this deal. The vehicle has 2000 miles on it. I promptly drove over to the Toyota dealer and talked with someone he presented himself as the sales manager and advised him to cease and desist contacting my Dad. This is the third time I’ve advised the dealer.
You would think that there are lots of ways this could be structured including a credit card with a very low spending limit, a simple trust arrangement and a power of attorney held by someone else. Probably the major issue is people with poor judgment often don’t think they have poor judgment. I know of someone around age 65 with a drinking problem. She “fell in love” with some scamster on the internet and wired him all her savings to do something or other & of course the money disappeared and so did he. I believe that that was the second time she had been cheated in a similar way. I doubt she would have been willing to structure her financial affairs to give a third party a veto over how she spent her money. I mean how many people want to give up the keys to their car much less control over their finances?
“a simple trust arrangement”? In what alternate legal and financial system does that exist?
“Probably the major issue is people with poor judgment often don’t think they have poor judgment.” that is the crux of the issue. If Old Dear thinks him/her/zir/theirself to be competent and not need help, how are you going to force them to accept some sort of supervision? I would not trust my father with anything, and he scam proofed just because he is insanely stingy, completely risk averse, and cannot use a modern phone. But he would never accept any supervision at 93.
Yeah, there are many frozen-from-the-early-1900s words and phrases still used in India. “the reason of my call”, “thrice” etc. I was recently speaking about that to someone from East Asia. I feel like there are many cultural patterns which are frozen from old “Indian” culture in East Asia.
India / Indians / South Asians in 2025 are a greater threat to the West than the Soviets were in 1985.
Can you expound upon your comment, please?
I’m very tired and don’t have much time, but in addition to the scamming described in the article, offshoring our data to one of the most corrupt companies in the world, and other aspects that probably escape me at the moment, here are some clues. In addition to the resulting un/underemployment, even retired people like my mother really suffer from incredibly poor customer service. The Canadian stuff is particularly concerning: Canada’s fertility rate is so low that it’s effectively genocide, and young Canadians are locked out of employment and housing in favor of South Asians so they cannot start families.
I suppose that individuals (like, presumably, yourself) are generally pawns taking advantage of the laws that the WEF puppets and legislators created, just like many good and decent German men in the 1940’s were drafted into their country’s military and therefore were “Nazi soldiers.” But to people like my grandfathers, those men were enemy combatants just like Hitler himself.
In addition to taking jobs, often due to bribes and nepotism, visa-holders often tolerate brutal and degrading hours and working conditions, enabling toxic management for even the few non-Indians who slip through the hiring process.
This is all over the Indian media (maybe 200 Telegus at one company and 100 at the other):
https://white-collar-workers-of-america.org/2025/04/10/fannie-maes-fraud-scandal-exposes-h-1b-abuse-and-ethnic-hiring-scandals/
https://x.com/FHFA/status/1909638783114297452
This article claims that “Indian-American Congressman Suhas Subramanyam has launched a probe, demanding due process and an explanation from the company.” Of course he would: they are His People, and nothing else matters.
https://www.news9live.com/world/us-giant-fannie-mae-fires-200-employees-mostly-telugus-over-alleged-donation-scam-2840287
Who knows how many qualified citizens have been denied employment over the years in favor of less qualified Telegus.
Cognizant:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-08/cognizant-discriminated-against-non-indian-workers-us-jury-says
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-cognizant-h1b-visas-discriminates-us-workers/
A brand new EEOC case against TCS:
https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/us-probes-discrimination-claims-against-indias-tcs-workers-allege-bias-towards-indian-staff/3813204/
https://www.financialexpress.com/trending/they-cannot-do-simple-algebra-us-investor-claims-all-h-1b-visa-holders-fake-skills-but-get-high-paying-jobs/3810703/
EVERY OTHER COMPANY with Indian management:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/19ajyuq/with_all_of_the_talk_about_dei_i_want_to_address/
https://www.reddit.com/r/trump/comments/1hpjqiu/want_to_know_why_so_many_h1bs_go_to_india/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dallas/comments/1j31yig/it_seems_that_american_airlines_is_offshoring_its/?chainedPosts=t3_1jzb4it
Canada:
https://www.reddit.com/r/canadian/comments/1g7a6eg/im_sick_of_the_environment_weve_created/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Torontology/comments/140y5d1/lady_frustrated_at_walmart_workers_you_only_hire/
https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/comments/1k2r2wk/comment/mnwi5w4/
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/indians-abroad/story/indian-origin-canada-td-bank-free-food-data-scientist-video-fired-students-food-bank-university-2531178-2024-04-24
Thanks for the detailed comment, and your time. You bring forth very interesting points of view, but I disagree with the conclusions. I have two arguments:
1. You are implying that the immigration of South Asians is the cause of the reduced birth-rate. I think that’s incorrect. The failure of the cultural values of the West, which is causing the reduced birth-rate is the reason of South Asian immigration. The late Polish social scientist Zygmunt Bauman, in one of his talks spoke to the effect that Europe neads x million immigrants to keep the lifestyle it has. The birth-rates of most of the Western countries with not much immigration is the lowest, like in Italy. Even the birth-rates in Eastern countries which have strong influence of the Western cultural values is on the decline, like South Korea and Japan.
Here’s an excerpt from a paper by Bauman:
> […] there are today 333 millions of Europeans, but with the present (and still falling) average birthrate will shrink to 242 million in the next 40 years. To fill that gap, at least 30 million newcomers will be needed*otherwise our European economy will collapse together with our cherished standard of living.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/egp.v5i1.17200
So, the cause of immigration is the decline of the value-system manifested via population-decline, not the other way.
2. You are assuming that South Asian immigrants are more corrupt than the former European immigrants who came to the US in mid-1900s, I don’t think that’s the case. The Irish Americans, Chinese Americans, etc. very all treated horribly as well possibly for similar reasons like being more corrupt, nepotistic etc. Here’s professor Mearsheimer talking about it and citing references:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY&t=11569
Overall, I think the elderly people have a reason to be angry from their perspective, but I don’t think that South Asians is the right abstraction to be blaming for it. Just like in your example both Hitler’s army and American soldiers were fighting righteously for their country, but the only real blame can be towards the division of populations into nations.
1. I cannot refute your point that birthrates are falling in some countries with relatively low migration (although I feel that it can stabilize and rebound if left alone, especially in Japan, which is still very overpopulated compared to its historical norms). But when you write, “The failure of the cultural values of the West,” it is part of why more and more Westerners hate you. You come arrive by the thousands from the most polluted and corrupt country in the world, possibly in history, to far superior countries with a smug savior complex. We were doing VERY WELL without you for millennia, and in fact were FAR better off before you came, yet oh how you love to criticize our culture, tell us we’re too stupid to maintain the technology that we invented, criticize our educational system while not participating in PISA since 2009 (when you scored 72/73!).
https://asiaconverge.com/2023/12/is-india-scared-of-the-pisa-truth/
When I moved within the US from an underachieving state to a higher-achieving state (which was my mother’s home state), I didn’t go around criticizing the new state: I did my best to shut up and assimilate!
Culture can be debated endlessly; economics is simpler. One aspect of European culture is the saying, “Can’t feed ’em? Don’t breed ’em!” which seems conspicuously absent from Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It is clear that South Asians were brought into Western countries by globalists for the express purposes of lowering wages and raising housing costs: now that young Americans, and especially Canadians, cannot find work that pays a living wage and cannot buy housing, the birth rate has dropped, which is used to justify even for MORE immigration. Many people are too stupid to understand the feedback mechanisms. https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/comments/1fml3th/why_canadas_fertility_rate_is_significantly_lower/
2a) Indians are notoriously corrupt: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024
Ireland is 10th best; India is 96th. The numbers don’t tell the full story
https://www.unz.com/article/india-its-worse-than-you-think/
2b) The Irish were often excluded from employment (“No Irish Need Apply”) by the majority population: this is the opposite of Indians, who, the moment they get a scintilla of power, use it to exclude citizens of the host country from opportunities.
2c) In addition to excluding non-Indians from stateside jobs, a large portion of Indians have ties to offshoring firms, which lead to further displacement / dispossession of Western citizens.
3) “both Hitler’s army and American soldiers were fighting righteously for their country” The individuals may not have been wrong to fight for their respective countries, but I’m not sure that Philip would agree that the German government’s policies and objectives were equally righteous!
4) Although the Indian mindset is generally predominantly self-centered / caste-centered, most Indians do harbor deep resentment for British colonialism and thus delight in harming British/white host countries and their citizens. Western people have heretofore naively welcomed a group of people who inherently hate them.
People are waking up, and corrective measures were instituted in the last century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_journey_regulation), but it may be too late already, given the political footholds already established by South Asians such as JD Vance’s wife, “Nikki Haley”, Vivek, Jagmeet Singh, Humzah Yousaf, Leo Varadkar, Rishi Sunak, etc.
I don’t really expect you to accept any of this. And you are probably in a much better place than I am financially. so you have more time and money to write or ChatGPT further responses. But the bottom line, which you will never be able to weasel out of is this: Aside from their differing responses to mass migration (i.e., I could say this unreservedly in 1990), I would be very happy to remain in the US, or move to another English-speaking country like Canada or Australia, or move back to any of of the countries my ancestors came from (mostly England, Scotland, and Germany that I’m aware of) (and those ancestors came for better opportunities, not to escape a failed hellhole). But for you. as an Indian, “The purpose of life of an Indian is to escape India, it can either be done by leaving India physically or figuratively by shifting to a gated community….”
https://x.com/Tim_Clif/status/1550523232872124418
https://lifestyle.livemint.com/news/talking-point/escaping-india-within-india-111644991574062.html
#Phil’s fan, I do not share #FBs viewpoint, but offshoring and onshoring correlates with drop of US birth rates, no follows them https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/birth-rate. Ie it started when US birth rates were OK and now they are not.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/birth-rate
I don’t want to weigh in on characterizing South Asians. But I would like to question “when US birth rates were OK and now they are not.”
Why is the U.S. birth rate “not OK”? If the birth rate were 1 child per potentially pregnant person (maybe “woman” is once again defined?) and the population thus fell substantially why would that be a problem? The U.S. wasn’t a horrible place to live in 1953 when the Corvette was introduced and the population was about 160 million (less than half of today’s number, though of course nobody really knows what today’s number is due to the impossibility of counting the noble enriching undocumented).
Once the U.S. population fell to the point where a person with a regular job could afford some real estate, I think that the birth rate would then trend up. Right now the birth rate is well above replacement for Americans with zero income, i.e., for those who automatically get a larger apartment every time they produce an additional child. See https://x.com/thehauer/status/1149055146451709957 for the chart.
Regarding Mearsheimer:
1) As stated earlier, the Irish were the *recipients* of discrimination *by* the dominant population; Indians are the *perpetrators* of discrimination *upon* the host population whenever they get the chance. These are opposites.
2) He is directly discussing *replacement migration*. Existing Western populations are expected to die off and be replaced by South Asians. This was NOT normal. The US Constitution begins: “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” Notice “ourselves and our Posterity.”
Yes, there were large waves of (European) immigration in the 1800s and early 1900s (when the US was industrializing and had a frontier to settle), but in those days the existing (European) citizens still had healthy fertility rates: it was “our posterity” PLUS some new Europeans. Today, the existing citizens are not reproducing, in order to make way for their non-European replacements (in Canada, the number and concentration of Indians is so large that it may make Canada *less* diverse). I oppose replacement migration and its proponents; it is antithetical to the founding principles of the US.
FB: Thanks again for your detailed comment!
> But when you write, “The failure of the cultural values of the West,” it is part of why more and more Westerners hate you. You come arrive by the thousands from the most polluted and corrupt country in the world, possibly in history, to far superior countries with a smug savior complex. We were doing VERY WELL without you for millennia, and in fact were FAR better off before you came, yet oh how you love to criticize our culture, tell us we’re too stupid to maintain the technology that we invented, criticize our educational system while not participating in PISA since 2009 (when you scored 72/73!).
I am not saying that the culture in the India at the present is any superior than the West, if it came out like that, that’s not what I meant. If anything, the culture in India is greately affected by America because a lot money is invested from there. In my opinion, at present, the culture in the States and Canada is more accepting than probably any other country in the world. But that doesn’t preclude the fact that its birth-rate is low, and its Caucasian population reducing. If anything, it is only logical to want countries to be like the population of Canada and America when it comes to accepting other cultures, and find out ways to keep all the progress the West has made intact, and that’s what I mean to point out.
> Although the Indian mindset is generally predominantly self-centered / caste-centered, most Indians do harbor deep resentment for British colonialism and thus delight in harming British/white host countries and their citizens. Western people have heretofore naively welcomed a group of people who inherently hate them.
I don’t think so, at least in academic circles, Indians deeply respect the American intelligentia of the generation of Chomsky, Mearsheimer, etc. Yes, there’s a resentment of colonialism, just like any other dependent country, but any person with half a brain would disconnect the current British population with British imperialism.
> “The purpose of life of an Indian is to escape India, it can either be done by leaving India physically or figuratively by shifting to a gated community….”
It’s not very far from the truth, I mostly agree with you. But I would point out that forming a clique, neighbourhood, group, country, etc. based on money, caste, color of skin etc. is how power is exerted everywhere.
The only contention I have with you is that you are assuming that country X immigrants are better/worse than country Y’s after a generation, after enough time in the US. I don’t buy that, especially for a country with strong capitalistic forces like America. Just like Dr. Greenspun points it out in his divorce book, the capitalistic forces in America cut through all the marital forces, I believe the same is true for the culture of differenct countries.
In my opinion, just like you said, the “cultural health” of any country is determined by how much disturbance it’s causing to other countries in form of its citizens immigrating there, causing wars/crisis, etc. The less disturbed it is by other countries and the less disturbance its causing to other countries, the more healthy it is. In other-words the impersonification of a healthy country’s culture is of Buddha, meditating.
Anonymous: Thanks! Could it be because the capitalistic forces can “predict” Bauman’s understanding?
The West has gone full woke. Birth rates are down, and the idea of the traditional family feels like ancient history. No wonder it’s mostly older white Democrats out there waving protest signs. Meanwhile, nonwhite are multiplying and assimilating. Take Palestinians, as an example (same is true for South Americans, Asians, Indians, you name it). While they are displaced, they are still making babies, ready to move to a western country and protest against the same white woke western that welcome them, while their brothers and sisters back home weigh Jihad on the West.