A Des Moines physician came extremely close to falling for a sophisticated imposter scam.

The doctor received a phone call from someone naming himself as an investigator for the Iowa Board of Medicine, the state agency which licenses and regulates physicians.

The caller said the Board of Medicine just suspended the doctor’s medical license, because the FBI issued an arrest warrant for the doctor, for drug trafficking. The caller went on to say authorities in Texas seized drugs at the international border and linked that drug shipment directly to the doctor. The caller told the doctor the FBI placed her under surveillance 15 days earlier.

The doctor was beyond terrified. “The panic was overwhelming” and “the fear of arrest…and total ruin was paralyzing,” she later told authorities.

The caller offered to act as her advocate. The caller said the Board of Medicine recognized she was innocent, but someone was framing her. To put the brakes on the FBI, the caller urged the doctor to cooperate and post a $19,747 bond and emphasized total secrecy. The doctor reacted just like the scammers intended: “I pictured being handcuffed, my career obliterated, my family broken.”

To drive home the urgency of the moment, the caller directed the doctor to go to a nearby UPS store, where faxed documents awaited her. There, she found a notice from the Iowa Board of Medicine suspending her medical license, very official looking, and a “Federal Bond And Protocol Agreement” written under the U.S. Department of Justice letterhead, with a load of legal jargon demanding the bond payment and threatening severe consequences if the doctor told anyone.

She reported, “I felt completely isolated and trapped.”

Things looked pretty dire for the doctor. Her mental state was in turmoil but now she caught a break.

“I’m not sure what happened next, but something made me question it all,” she said.

The doctor realized she lived just minutes away from the offices of the Iowa Board of Medicine in Des Moines. With the caller still on the phone, she drove there and walked in. The Board of Medicine staff talked her down, and confirmed she was talking to a scammer. The doctor finally hung up on a screaming scammer.

This scary story highlights a couple of things:

• If you hold a professional license, a great deal of detailed information about you and your work is public information, likely published online by regulatory authorities. This increases the chance of a targeted scam attempt against you. Scammers can tailor their phony, scary stories using language and background narrowly specific to your profession. Many people, besides physicians, hold professional licenses. The list includes nurses, educators, pharmacists, stockbrokers, insurance agents, accountants, and more.
• Scammers are skillful at creating official-looking government and professional documents, which they offer up as proof of their authenticity. In the last six months, fraud victims showed me fake IRS tax returns, non-disclosure agreements, prenuptial agreements, wills, legal contracts, police records, earnings reports, invoices, news releases, just to name some. And often they just completely fabricate documents, like the “federal bond and protocol agreement” you read about in this story.

Criminals targeted the Des Moines doctor with a detail-heavy attack very specific to her circumstances, but the basic techniques used against the doctor work in almost all scams:

• Scammers scare or excite people
• Scammers lie about who they are
• Scammers pressure people to act right now
• Scammers work to isolate their victims

Contact Seniors vs. Crime

Let me know about scams, fraud, or other crookedness you run across. Most of what I learn, I learn from you. Contact me at Seniors vs. Crime, Clinton County Sheriff’s Office, 563-242-9211, extension 4433, or email me at randymeier@gapa911.us.

Randy Meier is the director of Seniors vs. Crime.