By CHARLES DUHIGG The New York Times May 20, 2007
The thieves operated from small offices in Toronto and hangar-size rooms in India. Every night, working from lists of names and phone numbers, they called World War II veterans, retired schoolteachers and thousands of other elderly Americans and posed as government and insurance workers updating their files.
Then, the criminals emptied their victims' bank accounts.
Richard Guthrie, a 92-year-old Army veteran, was one of those victims. He ended up on scam artists' lists because his name, like millions of others, was sold by large companies to telemarketing criminals, who then turned to major banks to steal his life's savings.
Mr. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on scores of other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers, regulators say.
InfoUSA advertised lists of "Elderly Opportunity Seekers," 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money," and "Suffering Seniors," 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease. "Oldies but Goodies" contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for
8.5 cents apiece. One list said: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."As Mr. Guthrie sat home alone -- surrounded by his Purple Heart medal, photos of eight children and mementos of a wife who was buried nine years earlier -- the telephone rang day and night. After criminals tricked him into revealing his banking information, they went to Wachovia, the nation's fourth-largest bank, and raided his account, according to banking records.