{"id":82138,"date":"2019-12-12T11:20:01","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T17:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=82138"},"modified":"2019-12-12T12:02:27","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T18:02:27","slug":"the-view-from-the-balcony-flim-flam-dont-get-scammed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-view-from-the-balcony-flim-flam-dont-get-scammed\/","title":{"rendered":"The View from the Balcony: Flim Flam Don’t Get Scammed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Monday, November 18 at 6:20 a.m., my phone rang. There was nothing all that unusual about an early morning call. For nine years I managed an inpatient psychiatric crisis facility and was on-call 24-7\/365. But in August I had moved to an outpatient clinic and was no longer on-call. Still, my Post-Traumatic On-call Disorder kicked in and my first thought was, \u201cOh, s**t! What\u2019s wrong now?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caller I.D. said the call was from Aberdeen, MS. Having received my share of robo-calls, my suspicions peaked. I expected to hear a recorded message about my car\u2019s warranty expiring or some terrible credit card disaster I was facing. But, no! This was an actual man claiming to be a sheriff\u2019s deputy and he sounded authentic\u2212whatever that means. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs this Randall Weeks?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, sir,\u201d I replied. My Daddy, having almost been arrested for questioning a Mississippi Trooper\u2019s radar when they first came out, taught me to always, always, ALWAYS, be polite to law enforcement. ALWAYS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMr. Weeks,\u201d he continued, \u201cYou have a warrant out for your arrest for failure to appear at your court date.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red flag number one: I knew nothing of any court date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat court date?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t get my voicemail?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red flag number two: I\ncheck my phone obsessively. It\u2019s part of the PTOD. There was no voicemail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, sir,\u201d I said. \u201cWhen was I supposed to be in court?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNovember the 10th<\/sup>,\u201d he said. \u201cYou had a ticket for failing to use your seat belt and now you have a second ticket for failure to appear in court, and now there\u2019s a warrant out for your arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red flag number three: The last ticket I got was for\nparking in the lot behind Old Venice right after the kiosk for paid parking was\nclandestinely installed. I\u2019d paid the damned no-armed thief online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSir,\u201d I said, \u201cI haven\u2019t gotten a traffic ticket for over a decade. Where was this supposed to have happened?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCrittenden County Arkansas\u201d, he said. \u201cWest Memphis, October the 2nd.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red flag number four: I hadn\u2019t been to West Memphis in ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was at a doctor\u2019s appointment that day in Oxford, MS,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cDo you have proof of that?\u201d he asked. \u201cHave you ever had your license plate stolen?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, sir,\u201d I said. \u201cI have proof, and, no, sir, I\u2019ve never had my tag stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOk,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat you need to do is write down ticket numbers I\u2019m gonna give you. You owe $150.00 for the seat belt infraction and $350.00 for failure to appear. Take the money and the ticket numbers to any sheriff\u2019s office in Arkansas, Mississippi, or Tennessee. They\u2019re gonna arrest you, but once they have the tickets and the money you can file to get that back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red flag number five: How stupid did he think I was? Still, I needed a little more proof before I called his bluff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAny sheriff\u2019s department?\u201d I asked. \u201cI live in Lafayette County. I don\u2019t have to pay it here or up there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, sir,\u201d he said. \u201cAny sheriff\u2019s department will do. But you need to stay on the line with me until you get there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can\u2019t hang up and call you back?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, sir,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to stay on the line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red flag number five: BINGO!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis doesn\u2019t sound authentic,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He hung up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Checkered flag: I crossed the finish line first and left him eating my dust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought it prudent to report this to the Oxford Police Department. An officer told me that this happens all the time and I didn\u2019t need to file a report. (If he\u2019d said I should meet him at the red telephone booth on the Square so he could handle this personally I\u2019d have been worried. People have been shot in similar scams, you know.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few nights ago an OPD squad car was behind me for a few miles. For a moment or two it flashed in my mind that the scam might not be a scam after all. But the officer soon \u201cceased pursuit\u201d. Maybe there were bigger fish to fry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s all be careful out there. Beware the\nFlim-Flam Man! \u2018Tis the season, you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026and that\u2019s the view from The Balcony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, November 18 at 6:20 a.m., my phone rang. There was nothing all that unusual about an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":39753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11902],"tags":[10286,10878],"class_list":["post-82138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-randy-weeks","tag-randy-weeks","tag-the-view-from-the-balcony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-5-11-View-from-the-Balcony.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}