[HN Gopher] Man, 83, tricked by scammers, gets 21 years to life ...
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Man, 83, tricked by scammers, gets 21 years to life for killing
Uber driver
Author : fortran77
Score : 36 points
Date : 2026-02-08 17:41 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| fortran77 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/YYECu
| almosthere wrote:
| When is the stopping point to get it so that our phone system
| stops scammers. We should migrate off phones except for personal
| calls to each other (without a number - more of a 2-step
| authorization, you can call me, I can call you, negotiated via
| links over email...
|
| The phone number is dead, and the only last need for it is
| scammers and companies that want to record you but you not record
| them.
| jackyinger wrote:
| While we're at it let's get rid of wire transfers, and
| transactions by bank id / account number. Something more fool
| proof and transparent is far overdue.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _let's get rid of wire transfers, and transactions by bank
| id / account number_
|
| You can't sent a Fedwire with _only_ account number [1]. And
| this woman wasn't shot because of wires, the man was told to
| hand over hard cash.
|
| [1] https://onrr.gov/document/fedwire.pdf
| abirch wrote:
| Minimally we should make spoofing harder and use some basic TLS
| type technology for calls.
| g8oz wrote:
| I thought STIR/SHAKEN was supposed to help. Whatever happened
| with that?
| fortran77 wrote:
| It's very hard to make people understand how scammers use third
| parties. Mom 92 year-old mother mailed a check that was stolen in
| the mail, had the name changed, and was e-deposited.
|
| My brother (a lawyer!) wanted to sue the person whose name is on
| the check! I had to convince him not to bother; that the person's
| account that the check was deposited to was probably some other
| victom who was tricked into giving the bank login information
| away and his account was being unwittingly used to launder
| checks. The scammer was most likely overseas, but pays U.S. Post
| Office employees to steal envelopes that likely contain checks
| and send images (See https://www.justice.gov/usao-ct/pr/former-
| postal-employee-se... for example)
|
| The bank reversed the check but we had to get a notarized
| statement from my mom, and it was a hassle for a 92 year old.
|
| As far as this case goes, guns should only be used in self-
| defense when there's an immediate danger. Not punitively. This
| guy's life wasn't immediately being threatened and he deserves to
| have the book thrown at him.
| abirch wrote:
| Checks in their current form need to be sunsetted. Either have
| a way of printing a check locally that have QR codes that
| include recipient's name and the sender's financial
| institution. No static routing and account numbers.
| mjevans wrote:
| That's the mindset isn't it?
|
| *Punitive* use of force.
|
| -----
|
| Batman usually doesn't do too badly. Not only is it fiction but
| they're often against fiction level villains who are 'hardened'
| criminals in literal senses. Even then the violence tends to
| stop at the point where actual resistance stops. (They get tied
| up and delivered to the cops with maybe the black eye used in
| the initial apprehension.)
|
| -----
|
| Contrast this with what we see repeatedly on TV when poorly
| trained and poorly supervised law enforcement officers beat
| down or outright murder someone until they're not just not
| resisting anymore but are outright _unable_ to resist at all.
| Such excessive use of force in a professional context should
| also be a crime that is punished with congruent weight for the
| breach trust in a public official absent extenuating
| circumstances ('I had an emotional reaction' leading directly
| to deadly force should not be such a circumstance).
|
| I do recall a highly unfortunate case of someone from WA state
| who was on some combination of super drugs such that there
| didn't appear to be a reasonable application of force to result
| in a successful outcome. More and better tools might help.
| Maybe net launchers and methods of incapacitating someone at a
| bit of a distance for mutual safety?
| c22 wrote:
| _> The scammer was most likely overseas, but pays U.S. Post
| Office employees to steal envelopes that likely contain checks
| and send images_
|
| Jesus, it's almost like Kaczynski was onto something.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _As far as this case goes, guns should only be used in self-
| defense when there 's an immediate danger. Not punitively. This
| guy's life wasn't immediately being threatened and he deserves
| to have the book thrown at him._
|
| I had agreed when I read your comment before I read the
| article. But after reading the article it feels like this is
| missing the mark. We're bumping up against the equivalent of
| gang stalking / stochastic terrorism here - someone being
| harassed through digital channels and put in a mental state
| where they're fearing for their life in the physical world.
|
| A similar case of the phenomenon happened in NY a while back
| [0] with someone being killed for driving up to the wrong house
| at night, with the shooter presumably having been pumped full
| of general fearmongering by mass media. But the stark
| difference in that case it was the shooter's own media diet
| creating insular paranoia whereas here it was personally-
| targeted digital communications making the shooter feel
| threatened by the person ostensibly acting as an agent of those
| threatening him.
|
| This is a tragic situation for sure, but falling back to
| applying fundamentalist judgement to emergent behavior is a
| mistake.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kaylin_Gillis
| fortran77 wrote:
| I'm not withoit any sympathy for the man. But if you choose
| to have a handgun you have to be 100% responsible for its
| use. I've owned guns when I've lived in rural areas, but I
| don't own one in Silicon Valley because I think the risk
| outweighs the benefit.
| mindslight wrote:
| I own (inherited) guns and live in a rural area, but taking
| a safety class made me realize I'm simply not the kind of
| person who will ever want to carry in public or
| preemptively escalate a situation with a firearm. So I
| think we're coming from a generally similar nuanced
| "centrist" background.
|
| But what does "100% responsible for its use" even mean,
| modulo mens rea? If instead of an Uber courier, this had
| been someone knowingly working for a local gang who acted
| physically threatening, we would be viewing the shooting as
| a lot more justified, right?
|
| I'd say that the shooter's perception was halfway to this,
| despite how we can Monday morning quarterback that the
| shooter should have perceived the human being they were
| aiming at was cowering and backing away. Human perception
| is terribly biased towards confirming what we think we
| should see.
|
| Taking a step back, I'm not trying to excuse the shooter
| here, especially in any kind of fully-exonerating manner.
| But rather I'd like to avoid the situation being wrapped up
| and tied off in a neat little bag of "personal
| responsibility" where an 83 year-old gets "21 years" [0],
| and we ignore the more fundamental issues that created such
| a tragic situation in the first place.
|
| Rather it's the surveillance industry's digital
| intermediation that makes it possible for the victim to be
| both perceived as an aggressive threat, while ultimately
| just being a regular peaceful person doing basic job after
| basic job (while shouldering an extreme amount of long-tail
| risk!)
|
| (Also there should probably be some age limit at which
| there starts to be a recurring competence examination for
| firearms, like there should be for driving, or having
| signature authority on a bank account for that matter. But
| uh, good luck with that!)
|
| [0] IRS life expectancy is 9 years, outside of prison.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| It's easy to place all the blame on the shooter but you're
| basically ignoring the other 999,999 in a million of these
| situations where bad stuff happens that don't escalate to this
| point by doing that.
|
| You can't just say that the people actually doing the thing
| (whatever that thing may be) are in the right because they are
| doing their jobs otherwise they become a black hole for
| infinite liability. You need to accept that the dead person was
| wrong to be there collecting that package at which point is
| becomes a question of who dispatched them (obviously not
| themselves in this case) on what grounds and under what
| circumstances, etc, etc and how did it lead to this failure.
|
| Think about this like an industrial ancient, not some
| heartstring grabbing rage bait. There will always be crazy old
| men. Sure, send him to prison or whatever but how can the chain
| of events that lead to this particular crazy old man killing
| someone under these circumstances be broken. Uber needs to
| tighten their shit up, so does the phone system, etc, etc.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Agreed. She shouldn't have been there--not that it was her
| fault, but Uber shouldn't pick up packages and deliver them
| to others. Some other service should do that, and it should
| make contact with both sender and receiver first to make sure
| everything is on the up-and-up.
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| Umm, it's incredibly easy to blame the shooter because in
| those 999,999 cases the shooter was not effectively
| kidnapping the person they were supposedly afraid of.
|
| This guy didn't just shoot the delivery person whom they were
| afraid of.
|
| He didn't let her drive away even after she was clearly
| scared, explained she was simply an Uber driver, showed no
| evidence of weaponry and just wanted to drive away.
|
| There's a reason he wasn't just convicted of killing the Uber
| driver but also of kidnapping.
| metalman wrote:
| Anyone with a gun is 100% responsible for the outcomes of
| useing it. The training for carrying it and useing it must be
| in absolutes, you always dissable, unload, or holster a
| weapon unless imediatly required, chamber is checked, the
| barrell NEVER tracks across a human, there is never a
| situation where an armed person can not walk away from an
| unarmed person, repeated, tested, habitual life long habbits
| in gun handling. Or some asshole who tried to get off on the
| crime of cold blooded murder of someone who he let in his
| house, had left his home after he got a gun, he followed her
| out and shot her, she tried to escape, he shot her 5 more
| times while she was backing away, and she THEN slammed his
| head in her car door. True grit, wish she made it.
|
| edit: pic from car right before he fires first shot
|
| https://atlantablackstar.com/2026/02/03/ohio-83-year-old-
| man...
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| JFC. Of course the old man is responsible, that's why he's
| going to prison.
|
| But to just leave it at that is to be an enabler of the
| scammers, there's a lot more that went into teeing up this
| situation that ought to be prevented.
|
| What if he'd just have fallen for the scam instead of
| shooting anyone? That's still not an acceptable outcome.
| dayofthedaleks wrote:
| Getting grifted is no excuse for shooting a stranger.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Yes, and nobody here is disagreeing with you.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| The amount of scams happening is insane.
|
| The amount of people being wraponized into doing terrible things
| for others is insane.
|
| This is kind of a gun story but not really IMO.
|
| This is kind of like a story like the people who SWAT others and
| sometimes people die and sometimes they are held accountable.
|
| If someone is committed to presenting a false narrative for a
| long time they can manipulate people into doing things. That's
| not new, but it's certainly more accessible than ever and nobody
| is ready for it =(
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| >The amount of people being weaponized into doing terrible
| things for others is insane.
|
| Really is mind boggling when you look at it as "fractional
| evil". Some hypothetical clerk may make 99 "could go either
| way" decisions one way or the other to little ill effect and
| 1/100 or maybe 1/1000 of the time their decisions costs someone
| tens of thousands of dollars for no good reason for it could
| have gone either way.
|
| How much of society's wealth is lost to such endeavors?
|
| One wonders how much "evil" exists only because there exists
| some amount of legitimate activity it can be mixed among to
| dilute it enough that nobody cares.
| Stevvo wrote:
| This man was not "weaponized into doing terrible things for
| others". After he kidnapped an Uber driver and determined she
| was not a threat, he murdered her in cold blood.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _amount of people being wraponized into doing terrible
| things_
|
| This story is headline news because it's rare. The man
| shouldn't have had a gun. That's where a confused elderly man
| went from deserving sympathy to contempt.
| jerlam wrote:
| The elderly man even figured out he was being scammed! The
| scammers didn't have the full name of the family member, and
| they had a key detail of the alleged situation incorrect.
|
| When the elderly man called them out, the scammers responded
| with threats and this apparently triggered the elderly man
| into (unfortunate) action.
| indubioprorubik wrote:
| And every scam across borders is a flyer for nationalism,
| isolationist politics and a cold shower to multiculturalism -
| as it shows the prevalence of "scams" beeing different and
| socially accepted beeing very different in different cultures.
| And when scamming the elderly can be socially accepted career
| in a society, the opinion of the affected on that society will
| corelate.
| prmph wrote:
| What are you talking about?
|
| Have you heard about the Epstein files? Was that a failure of
| multiculturalism?
|
| Not only that, some people from western cultures are also
| preying on poor women in 3rd world countries with sex
| tourism.
|
| Western cultures are supporting the rape of resources and
| corruption in poor countries around the world.
|
| Capitalism, as practiced in western cultures, is in many ways
| a sad scam that leads to a lot misery for a lot of people.
|
| These are just a few examples to show: all cultures have bad
| in them. No culture is good
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| Outside of the obvious, the tragedy of the young woman losing her
| life, the fact that the scammers likely will not be impacted at
| all, etc. a couple of other thoughts.
|
| - It's strange that we still haven't setup any sort of
| authenticated form of communication with official parties.
| Email/phone call scams have been around for a long time. They're
| very easy to fall prey to. There's no reason our phones shouldn't
| be able to inform us that a certain number is officially from the
| IRS, Cops, Verizon, etc.
|
| - This is a form of Swatting. Delivery companies, and also the
| police, etc need to do better in ensuring the people demanding
| services are where they're demanding the service and/or the
| person who lives there is aware and genuinely needs to be
| visited. - We need a bit of a broken windows policing for
| online/digital scams. The reason they are blowing up is there is
| hardly a risk of being caught. And the cost/benefit analysis
| probably suggests that th police really shouldn't be involved in
| most of the individual cases or expend too many resources.
| However, this blows up the number of cases so the aggregate cost
| does indeed grow too high. So there needs to be an effort to
| prosecute and expend resources even on low level cases so the
| criminals get the message that they're not gonna get away with
| it.
| Neywiny wrote:
| In re your first point, it's tricky because the advice is to
| call them back on the publicly available number. Problem is, I
| know somebody who fell for a SEO hijack and called a fake
| number. Not everybody knows how to spot a scam. The guy here
| did though, and he used my techniques (ask questions they'd
| know the answer to). He knew he was getting scammed. I think it
| was just an emotional override with weighing the risks. This
| one is very different than a call saying the IRS wants Google
| Play gift cards or whatever. Especially with the scammers
| having the woman actually show up. That's next level in all the
| wrong ways
| coldtea wrote:
| We need a high trust society.
|
| Everything else is band aids on a broken one.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Agreed. We (meaning the United States) used to have this for
| the most part. It doesn't scale to mediate all human
| interactions with authentication/authorization.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > It's strange that we still haven't setup any sort of
| authenticated form of communication with official parties
|
| Because this would add compliance and regulatory overhead which
| the Telco industry has lobbied against, and activist
| organizations like the EFF will screetch _muh liberties_ while
| taking donations from those very companies, and HNers will
| dutifully complain about the descent into authoritarianism.
|
| Additionally, a large portion of smaller essentially fly-by-
| night VoIP vendors and MSPs have an incentive to not ask
| questions about who is purchasing their services despite
| attempts at regulation by the FCC [0].
|
| [0] - https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-24-1235A1.pdf
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Phone scams shouldn't even be a thing. Every phone number has
| to be registered to a company. Simply hold those companies to
| account for all crimes committed using them.
|
| If you sell numbers to Indian scammers, then you take the hit
| for all the scams, because why are you selling phone numbers to
| scammers?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > It's strange that we still haven't setup any sort of
| authenticated form of communication with official parties.
|
| My alarm company had me come up with challenge and response
| words. Yet when they call they want me to say my word first.
| Like how do I know they are who they say they are? Caller ID
| can easily be spoofed.
|
| So so much for that idea...
| randyrand wrote:
| "Objectively, a reasonable person would not kidnap and ultimately
| murder a defenseless person because they were scared," Mr. Scott
| told the jury.
|
| That doesnt sound objective to me at all.
| prmph wrote:
| Sad story.
|
| It is partly also due to all the guns and the shooting-obsessed
| culture, folks. The way people are quick to use guns is not
| normal. I was shocked by the recent ICE shootings.
|
| And the fact the woman was of an ethnicity most associate with
| crime didn't help either, I daresay. The man probably had his
| biases confirmed and resorted to deadly violence without much
| tought.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| > And the fact the woman was of an ethnicity most associate
| with crime
|
| I feel like I'm missing something here. What ethnicity? And why
| do "most" associate it with crime?
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