In the last post, you were able to see an image of my beloved dog and hear a little bit about fraud and theft in America. This post you will also see a picture of my beloved dog, and I am hoping that with the context from the last blog post you can at least try to picture yourself in Sophia’s shoes who is the person I interviewed for the substance of this blog post. If people can be duped into paying pseudo-government officials money, and phony boyfriends and girlfriends, why couldn’t they be duped into paying a company that was hiring them? And this is where Sophia’s story begins…
The Dataset… This dataset was scrubbed the old fashioned way…manually. Through a series of messages and pictures. Thank you, Sophia, for helping me construct this timeline with your data.
Sophia, whose real name will be kept secret to protect her identity, is a young blonde who really likes to look fashionable and has a cat or, at least that is what Facebook seemed to suggest. Sophia began to talk through some of the things that she had felt leading up to the week where she was robbed, and in reflecting what she learned from the incident, Sophia said, “I learned a lot about their techniques,” and when I asked her for advice for others if they found themselves in a questionably scammy scenario, she said, “[If they ask you for money] have them buy it for you…It’s not your responsibility,” and when they do send you money, “wait till the paycheck goes through.” At the beginning of our conversation, Sophia looked distraught and bewildered, but after making this statement her face reddened with anger, as she thought of the people who did this to her. When we reviewed some of the correspondence, one of the last messages Sophia sent seemed to match her mood now the most which involved some colorful language meant to offend the scammers. The scammers left without a trace and the whole exchange took only a week. If you are meeting someone for the first time and there is even the remotest suggestion of a scammer vibe this person is giving you, see FTC.gov, and look at their information on scammers. Their website has a lot of great resources for how to distinguish whether someone is a scammer or not and they have a phone number you can call to report scams. If you think you are alone, think again and then look at all of the data the FTC provides on other individuals who were also scammed out of their money or had their identity stolen.
Stepping down from my soapbox, please look at the transaction line chart alongside the timeline of events as they unfolded between Sophia, the Scammer, and the bank. If you don’t want the annoying giant play button in the middle of the viz please go to this link http://public.tableau.com/views/viz_of_scam_timeline_with_balance_v3/TimelineFinal?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link where you can see the best format of this viz.
Returning to a bit of advice Sophia gave earlier, “It’s not your responsibility,” and it is not okay to make a transaction without the guarantee of having the money bounce free in your hand or in your bank account. This bit of advice is important because I think it shows how the power should be in the potential employee’s hands or the requestee, as is the case for all other scamming incidents, not the employer’s or potential scammer.
References:
- https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/features/feature-0037-imposter-scams
- https://playfairdata.com/how-to-make-a-timeline-in-tableau/
- https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/data-visualizations/explore-data
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