"Jim Fisher" wrote:
They asked for my name, address, phone number, mother maiden name, Social
Security number, bank account & routing number, and other information that
was very personal that no bank would ever request. It is very difficult for
me to imagine someone who would be so naive or stupid enough to actually
enter real information.

Con games have been going on forever. I first heard of the "I found some
money and I'll split it with you, but you have to put up $X to show your
good faith" scam when I was a kid (my father told me how it worked).

I next heard of it a bunch of years later when a woman I was working with
fell victim to it. She came in one morning and started telling a strange
story of how somebody approached her and said they had found $10,000 or
some such. She was flabbergasted when I finished the story for her.

These days, the same scam is still going around, the only difference being
that email has taken over as the transmission mechanism. These scams
survive because they continue to work.