Local senior is victim of phone scam

Donald Swennes’ “friends” usually call before noon. They dial from Florida, Brooklyn, Canada, even Kingston, Jamaica. At 83, he is hard-of-hearing and often struggles to decipher the accents with which his callers speak.

Their conversations rarely shift from money. Swennes is a big winner, they say. The millions — with which he would buy his folks’ old farmhouse in Kalispell — are just around the corner. He simply needs to take care of some minor transaction fees.

Sitting at home smoking a red Pyramid 100 cigarette, Swennes is watching American Pickers on the History Channel. The TV volume is so loud he cannot hear the telephone ring. He mentions how he used to frequent yard sales, hunting for antiques like the guys on the show. He did that until his driver’s license expired. He tried three times to get it back, but that written test is tough. Without a license, Swennes said, he spends most of his days “doing nothing.” Outside, on his porch, a tattered, folded Montana driver’s license manual peeks out from under a cushion on an old couch.

With the TV volume turned down so he can talk, Swennes hears his phone ring. The man on the other end says his name is John Peterson. He asks for Donald, strange considering Swennes says everyone calls him “Buck.”

The man presents himself as a representative from The America Cash Award Sweepstakes Co. He says he is calling from Veer, Del., a place that does not exist. Caller ID says he is from Florida. Swennes has $2.5 million coming once he sends a $150 money order to Tifton, Ga. Of course, the whole deal is a scam.

Swennes first fell for a money scam a few years ago. Since, he estimates he has lost $1,000 to the crooks during the course of six or seven transactions. He recently bought a prepaid money card and put $50 on it. He read the number on the back to the person on the phone. In return, he was told a UPS package full of cash would arrive at his house. He waited all day Monday. Tuesday, too.

“They never came,” Swennes said.

He admits he knows the callers are scammers, but he hopes one day it will be the real deal.  

Swennes’ wife, Bernie, wishes the callers would just get an honest job. Her eyes narrow and her brow furrows when she thinks of the tales the callers spin for her husband of 60 years.

“I tell him, ‘Those people won’t give you a roll of toilet paper,’” Bernie Swennes, 80, said.

Bernie Swennes worries about her husband and the couple’s financial wellbeing. She once found a check for $2,000 ready to be mailed. She no longer lets her husband write checks, but still, she wonders why he falls for these scams time and again.

University of Montana psychology professor Lucian Gideon Conway III believes it could do with hope.

“Hope without a known certain outcome is really important to us,” he said. “If we lose hope that things will work out, we do not function very well. And when we want something to be true, we tend to psychologically twist facts in favor of what we want.”

Once, his dad called and asked for $50. Jeff Swennes knew where the money was going but provided anyway.

“He’s my dad,” Jeff Swennes said. “And it was only once.”

Libby Police Chief Jim Smith says there is little he can do about predatory callers.

“We have no jurisdiction in Kingston,” he said. “And the FBI or other federal guys are not going to do much because the amount of money involved is relatively small.”

The best the Swennes’ can do is change their number. Scammers relentlessly return to their marks after a first success. When Bernie Swennes reads an unknown number on the caller ID she picks the phone up and slams it down. But she knows the scammers have her husband’s cell phone number, and she worries that he continues to talk to them.

“The money is always so close,” Donald Swennes said.