They are bogus bank tellers and repairmen, crooked salespeople and software peddlers. There is a new crime of opportunity for the next few weeks,'' acknowledged Herbert Stupp, commissioner of the New York City Department of Aging, which represents a group most often targeted by the scammers.
Con artists are smart.
But reports of millennial rip-offs have surfaced across the country. In New Mexico, a caller posed as an Internal Revenue Service agent and began asking questions related to possible Y2K problems. After securing a variety of personal information, the ''IRS man'' used the victim's name, address and Social Security number to open credit card accounts, ringing up large charge bills. Phone users in Oregon and western Washington were recently victimized in ''slamming'' schemes, where long-distance service is switched, often without the customer's consent. Callers pretending to represent legitimate long-distance companies made the switch by pretending they wanted to prevent service interruptions in the next millennium.