Six Seattle residents were arrested and charged with stealing $3.3 million of Covid relief funds by pretending to be landlords and submitting fake leases and eviction notices to the Small Business Administration (see story here).
Scammers pretending to be the Everett Animal Shelter are trolling “lost pets” notices and extracting “fees” from desperate pet owners searching for their lost dogs and cats (see story here).
A thief stole the gas from a Seattle hiker’s car by drilling a hole in his gas tank (see story here).
Thieves are everywhere and their ingenuity is boundless. The scams are endless. Shoplifting is a major problem for retailers. Why is our society now besieged by so much thievery? Widespread drug addiction? Lack of good jobs? A societal-scale breakdown of morals? I don’t know.
What I do know is ordinary citizens are now besieged by robocalls and email scams, need to have eyes on deliveries to thwart porch pirates, locking gas caps on their cars, and are at constant risk of having their catalytic converters sawed off and stolen. I’ve never seen this much dishonesty in my 70-plus years. We live in a Dickensian society now.