I Scammed The Scammer
By: Daniel Williams
Tags: Schools, Scam, Humor, College, Comedy

Photo by Anthony Shkraba from Pexels

My school tries to keep us safe from scammers:

“WARNING: This email originated from outside of Geneva College. While it may be legitimate, please do not click links or open attachments if you do not recognize the sender.”

But the email I received last week, an email that originated from outside of Geneva College, was from my department chair. True, he wasn’t using his usual email address, but I figured he had his reasons.

His message:

Available, cellphone number?

Best Regard

Odd, I thought. Why does he need my number? He already has it. Then I thought, but maybe his cellphone died and he’s trying to fill his new phone with the numbers of the most important people in his life.

So, I sent my number.

Also, this is a ticklish time for me. I’m only a handful of days away from my tenure review meeting with the all powerful Faculty Personnel Committee.

If you don’t know how tenure works, here’s how tenure works: if the school decides not to give you tenure, you’re fired.

I felt I had to take the email seriously. After all, the address sounded very real and official: deptchair837181@gmail.com

If your department chair wants to talk to you and you’re only days away from the biggest meeting of your life, you talk to your department chair. Even if he wants to communicate through tin cans and a rope or smoke signals or a Ouija board, you talk to him.

I emailed my number at 4:24PM.

At 4:27PM, my cellphone buzzed with the following text message:

1-213-416-7323: Hi Daniel it’s [his real name], I’m in a meeting right now can’t talk, get back to me as soon as you get this text. Thanks!

It took me a moment to figure out what to do.

How can I get back to him if he’s in a meeting? If I call, I’m fired. But if I don’t call, I’m equally fired. I’ve heard of “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” but I’ve never experienced it first hand. Big clichés are happening to me. Does this mean I’m getting old? I feel old. I feel fired. My chair has thrown me into a Bible-level paradox. I’m stuck!

Suddenly, I understand what’s happening: this is his way of letting me know the bad news. He’s strumming my pain with his two thumbs, singing my doom with his words, firing me softly, with his text.

Wait, I could text him back! That’s what he means!

I texted him back.

ME: Roger that. Standing by.

At this point, my wife knew about the conversation I was having with my department chair.

“It’s a scam,” she said. “Don’t answer.”

“True,” I said, “unless it’s not a scam.”

“Except it is.”

My boss texted again:

1-213-416-7323: I don’t know if it’s convenient for you to get a task done for me.

What choice do I have? After I’m tenured, I can feel free to ignore texts like this, or fill my replies with gruesome profanity, but at the moment, I’m on the hook.

ME: Sure thing. Shoot.

1-213-416-7323: Is there any Walmart or store close to you there

Now I wondered if maybe my wife was right. But department chairs are people too, and people have to shop, and when people are in a big meeting, they can’t always get to Walmart, and sometimes people need something from Walmart right now, as in yesterday, as in get me my Great Value Lunch Meat, immediately. Papa needs his sandwich.

So, when my boss asked, “Is there any Walmart or store close to you there,” I said,

ME: There is.

1-213-416-7323: Okay, I need google play gift cards, can you get some at the store right now? I will reimburse as soon as I’m out of the meeting with any inconveniences. Thanks!

Usually my boss, an English professor, is pretty good with English. But he just told me he would reimburse me with inconveniences. Not just inconveniences, though. He’d promised any inconveniences. “Any” is a lot. “Any” is terrifying, because it could be all of them. He could inconvenience me by framing me for embezzlement, or by filling my mouth with peanut butter and then forcing me to address the entire faculty senate.

Even if I didn’t quite understand his message by the letter, I understood the spirit of it:

I was being scammed.

“Hey,” I said to my wife, “I’m being scammed.”

“I know you are,” she said, “which is why I said don’t answer.”

“But I’m involved now.”

“Stop quoting Titanic. And please stop texting.”

“Just let me play with him a little bit.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Why?”

“What if you make him angry?”

“That’s good.”

“What if he kills you?”

“I’ll be careful.”

“You’ll be dead!”

We were quoting Star Wars. It happens, when you’re in love.

I interrupted this jolly fight with my wife to answer my new friend. The man had asked for Google Play gift cards.

ME: But don’t you hate google?

1-213-416-7323: It’s for a project at the meeting okay. I need you to get 5 cards for $100.00 each worth of physical google play gift card. Scratch-off the back code and Attach me a clear pictures of all the cards showing the codes to me here, Hope this is clear? Thanks!

ME: Got it. Heading to walmart now.

1-213-416-7323: Okay, waiting on you. Thanks!

ME: You bet.

Then he sent me an emoji:

Image by Julian Grüneberg from OpenMoji

I decided it was time to show my friend that relationships between department chairs and their colleagues can be close. Very close. Intimate.

So, I sent this:

Image by

Emily Jäger from OpenMoji

Then I gave myself enough time to pretend to drive to Walmart.

At 5:28PM, I wrote back:

ME: Im here. At walmart. What was it you needed?

I knew what he needed, but I wanted him to repeat himself. I wanted to hunt him the way wolves hunt, by chasing, forcing their victims to run endlessly, exerting themselves until they’re just about dead from exhaustion. Then, the kill.

1-213-416-7323: 5 cards for $100 each of Google play gift card

ME: Hold on. They switched everything around in here. A little lost.

1-213-416-7323: Okay

I waited about five minutes, getting myself reoriented to the store’s new layout. My mother says Walmart rearranges its internal organs like this because Sam Walton wants you to get lost. Sam knows that people who are lost become afraid, and frightened people spend more money.

At last, I figured out where things were, and I made my way to the gift cards.

ME: Found the cards. There are so many.

1-213-416-7323: Okay, Purchase 5 cards for $100 each.

ME: But they only have 10 cards.

Silence from my friend for a moment, then he wrote:

1-213-416-7323: Okay

Then I wrote:

ME: Do you want all 10?

My friend was not silent after this, not even for a second.

1-213-416-7323: Yes

ME: For sure.

I could tell my answer made him very happy, because he wrote this again:

Image by Julian Grüneberg from OpenMoji

But then I ran into trouble. Did I tell you it was Halloween night? It was Halloween night, and going to Walmart on a holiday means you might be waiting in the checkout line for a long, long time.

ME: Sorry. The lines are horrible. It’s taking forever.

This was 6:12PM. I wrote again at 6:20.

ME: Okay. My turn. Hold on.

1-213-416-7323: Okay

6:28PM

ME: Okay, we’re in business!

1-213-416-7323: Okay, waiting on you

ME: Sure. Stand by.

But now, it was time for me to learn a little bit more about my friend.

ME: What are you guys doing for Halloween?

He didn’t answer. I waited until 6:37PM.

ME: You there?

1-213-416-7323: Yes

I gave my friend the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he missed my last text, or maybe he was thinking very hard about his answer and needed time.

ME: What are your halloween plans? You always do so much.

A pause. My scammer had to dig deep now, down to his humanity. It took him a minute to find it. Then he found it and shared with me his holiday plans:

1-213-416-7323: Plan Perfect Decorations

This was acceptable. I respect people who take Halloween as seriously as I do. You can’t half-ass it. You have to be like my friend here and shoot for perfection. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the imperfections, or, as a friend of mine likes to put it, the inconveniences.

Having received what I wanted, I continued the conversation:

ME: Sweet! Do you want me to scan the cards?

I wrote this because I knew my friend didn’t want me to scan the cards. He had been very clear about what he wanted. But he was going to have to be very clear again because, again, I am a wolf.

1-213-416-7323: Scratch-off the back code and Attach me a clear pictures of all the cards showing the codes to me here.

I could tell my friend was getting impatient because this is exactly what he wrote to me earlier. Word for word. Even the grammatical errors were intact. The only difference was, he left out the politeness he had included before, things like “Hope this is clear?” and “Thanks!”

Just like Darth Vader, he had dispensed with the pleasantries. But this dispensing helped me notice something new. He’d said, “Attach me a clear pictures of all the cards showing the codes to me here.”

He wanted me to send them “here.” There was something so warm and comfy about the word, so domestic, so homey.

So, I wrote this:

ME: Wait are you at home?

1-213-416-7323: No

A pause.

1-213-416-7323: Scratch and send them one after the other

Another pause.

1-213-416-7323: Is that clear

Dang, I thought, he’s becoming militaristic. Is that clear. No question mark. It’s like an order. My friend was making a scene, specifically a scene from A Few Good Men:

1-213-416-7323: We follow orders, son. We follow orders or people die. It’s that simple. Are we clear?

ME: Yes, sir.

1-213-416-7323: Are we clear?!

ME: Crystal.

I was a little concerned about my friend’s new tone, so I wrote,

ME: Holy crap, is the meeting still going on?!

1-213-416-7323: Yeah

Wow. A meeting that goes on for that long. Must be serious. I was worried about him, though not as worried as my wife.

“You’re still talking to him?” she said. It was 7:01PM.

“Yes,” I said.

“Just don’t make him too mad. I don’t want us getting murdered.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not even listening.”

“Sorry, I just have to keep this going a little longer.”

She thought about it. “I guess if he’s talking to you, he isn’t scamming some sweet old lady. Okay, just don’t tell him where we live.”

“This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“It is, though. You’ve never done this before. It actually is your first rodeo.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“You’ll be dead!”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

Like I said, I was worried about my friend. This meeting of his had been going on now for over two-and-a-half hours. On a Saturday. On a holiday. I had to find out if he was okay.

ME: Are you in trouble?

1-213-416-7323: No

ME: You can tell me.

1-213-416-7323: Let me know if you are sending the cards or not

He was trying to change the subject. But I knew him well enough now to read between the lines. This was a cry for help.

ME: Dang. You are in trouble. Im coming over. Ill be there in 20 mins. Sit tight. Ill help.

My friend said nothing.

7:23PM

ME: Gotta get gas.

7:58PM

ME: Im at your house. No one’s home. I can leave the cards in your mailbox?

My friend didn’t answer. Damn it. What’s happening to him in that meeting?

8:24PM

ME: Okay, i dropped the cards off. Let me know if there’s anything else i can do. Happy Halloween!

I was about to stop texting and begin praying for him instead when he wrote back:

1-213-416-7323: Send the card here

Then another message:

1-213-416-7323: I can’t get home tonight

Horrible. A meeting that lasts all night! This guy’s idea of what department chairs do is eerily close to my idea of what they do, which is why I never ever want to be a department chair.

ME: But i already dropped them off. They’ll be waiting for you when you get home.

1-213-416-7323: Go back pick them up, I won’t be home tonight

One thing I’ve learned about friendship as I’ve gotten older is that you have to make boundaries. I will do many things for my friends, but there comes a time when I have to say, “No.” Friends, even good friends, occasionally ask too much. I forgive them, of course, but I don’t budge. It’s about self-respect, but it’s also about keeping my friends from creating empires of ego, where the people in their lives are only there to serve them. It’s about making us all a little more human.

Again, I will do a great deal for my friends. I will go to Walmart for you. I will purchase a thousand dollars in gift cards and hand them over. I will ask about your holiday plans, and I will listen. I will worry about you. I will let you know that you can confide in me. I’m safe. I am loyal. And when you push me away because you’re afraid that I might just come to the rescue and save you from yourself, and help you do what scares you the most, live, then I will drive to your house, even late in the evening, and I will fill your mailbox with all the help I can afford to give. But that’s where I draw the line.

As I said, my friend wrote, “Go back pick them up, I won’t be home tonight”

Then I said this:

ME: Dont worry. No one will bother them in your mailbox. Theyre safe.

And then this:

ME: God bless.

And then, to close our four-hour conversation, I said this: