Photo credit: Shuservice-Wikimedia Commons CC by SA4.0 DEED

by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Let’s say you’re an individual who needs a van that’s wheelchair accessible, or a medical facility or senior community that requires a mobility-accessible vehicle.

Custom vehicles are expensive–ranging from $80-100K plus for new models. Therefore, many buyers opt for used ones.

Because such vehicles are relatively rare and hard to find, choices are limited.

So, you go online.

There you find a van that fits your needs. You sign a contract, send payment, receive a bill of sale, and arrange delivery for a van you’ve never actually seen.

If all goes well, the van arrives as promised and you go merrily on your way.

However, if you bought that vehicle from an unscrupulous party or dealership, you may never see the van and you may be out the money.

In December 2023, Edward Scott Rock, 47, a Philadelphia used car dealer, was indicted on charges of mail and wire fraud. According to the U.S. Attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, Rock allegedly “accepted payment for, but failed to deliver, automobiles to approximately 120 purchasers.”   

“The Indictment alleges that between 2019 and 2023, Edward Scott Rock obtained used vehicles from automobile auctions, and then listed and advertised them for sale on the Internet. The majority of vehicles sold by Rock to victims were accessible vehicles equipped for wheelchair-users or people with disabilities. Despite signing bills of sale for the vehicles, and accepting payment, Rock did not deliver the vehicles as agreed upon. In total, Rock defrauded approximately 120 victims across 36 states, and caused losses exceeding $2.5 million. Approximately two-thirds of Rock’s victims were persons with a physical or mobility disability, persons over the age of 65, or businesses which provided transportation services to those populations.”

According to Jalopnik.com, “a 2017 Ford T150 van [was] sold to 13 different people over 11 months...Rock took in $260,000 for the previously mentioned wheelchair-accessible T150 before handing over the van to one of the buyers, without a title.”

In another example from wift.org, a Tempe, AZ dealer wired $25,000 to Rock to purchase two Ford cargo vans. Several months later, the vans had not been delivered and the dealer demanded a refund. Excuses and more delays followed. After two years and threats of legal action, Rock finally refunded the money.

In other cases, “Rock sometimes sent refund checks, but he’d either stop payment on them or they would bounce, the indictment said.”

The U.S. Attorney states: “If convicted, the defendant faces a maximum possible sentence of 170 years’ imprisonment, a 5-year period of supervised release, a $2,750,000 fine, and restitution and forfeiture.”

Motorfinanceonline.com quotes a March 2023 survey in which 21% of buyers have purchased a vehicle online, sight unseen. This is an increase from 2021 when only 10% did so.

Scammers are quick to jump on new opportunities to part unsuspecting victims from their money.

Caveat emptor.

~~~

TKZers: Would you ever buy a vehicle sight unseen? If you have, what was your experience?

by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

True Crime Thursday always falls on Thanksgiving Day. That gives me a great opportunity to search out crimes related to the holiday.

Here are the top six crimes committed on/around Thanksgiving:

1. Domestic violence – Long-simmering family tensions, often combined with alcohol, can turn violent, like this case of a woman who stabbed her half-brother with a two-tined carving fork.
2. Speeding and traffic offenses – Although the period between Christmas and New Year’s sees the most traffic, Thanksgiving comes in second with an estimated 55 million travelers on the road.
3. Driving while under the influence – Binge drinking often starts on the appropriately named “Blackout Wednesday” and continues over the four-day weekend.
4. Theft – Retail thefts and thefts from vehicles spike during the holidays but cargo theft also rises. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a particularly busy day for thieves because truck drivers often leave loads unattended while they go home for the holiday.
5. Disorderly conduct – While most of us are eating the bird, some are flipping the bird, which could mean a charge of disorderly conduct in Texas.
6. Vandalism – This crime category includes egging cars and houses, graffiti, breaking windows, stealing or destroying decorations, and other low-grade mischief most commonly committed by juveniles. Kids, please stay home and have another piece of pie instead.

In case your turkey doesn’t thaw in time to cook, here’s a great alternate use for a frozen bird:

In 2008 in North Carolina, a man stole money from a gas station then assaulted a woman while trying to jack her car. A Good Samaritan grabbed a frozen turkey from the woman’s groceries and clobbered the attacker on the head several times. The attacker fled with the woman’s car and crashed into several vehicles. He was later arrested, treated at a hospital for serious head injuries, and charged with numerous felonies.

To wrap up on a positive note, here’s a photo of volunteers working to ensure a Happy Thanksgiving for service members during the annual Turkey Drop at Fort Lewis McChord Air Force base in Washington.

Annual Volunteer Turkey Drop
Photo credit: Joint Base Lewis McChord

Hope your Thanksgiving is crime-free!

TKZers: What are you thankful for?

I give thanks for TKZ’s community that generously shares their knowledge to help other writers!

Photo credit: Christian Wiediger, Unsplash

By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

You receive a text message on your phone that is clearly meant for someone else. The sender must have accidentally hit a wrong number and the person the message was intended for didn’t receive it.

It sounds important, perhaps a doctor’s office trying to reach a patient, a family member with an emergency. Or it could even be good news like a promotion or award.

Naturally, you want this important—but misdirected—message to go to the right person.

What do you do?

You could call or text the number back and explain that you received the message by mistake, and you want to let them know so they can contact the right person.

But should you do that?

According to the FBI, no.

Why?

Because “wrong number text” scams are on the rise.

When you return the message, you’re thanked profusely. Poor Aunt Tillie is in the hospital and if you hadn’t taken the time to let them know, Aunt Tillie could pass away without seeing her beloved niece or nephew.

They continue the conversation and pretty soon you’re texting like old friends. Therein lies the risk.

The “person” you’re communicating with could be a scammer or even a bot programmed to deliver appropriate-sounding responses.

According to the FBI: “The scammers behind the wrong number text messages are counting on you to continue the conversation.  They want to exploit your friendliness.  Once they’ve made a connection, they’ll work to become friends or even cultivate a remote romantic relationship.  It’s all a ruse, designed to get you to relax your mistrust so you’ll be more susceptible to falling for their scam, such as a cryptocurrency investment or many others targeting victims.”

What should you do if you receive a text meant for someone else?

The FBI advises, “Don’t respond.”

It’s a sad world when common decency, kindness, and courtesy are turned against people and used to take advantage of them. But that’s where we are.

Watch out for older family and friends who often fall victim to scams like this.

By PJ Parrish

Today’s submission is a second attempt. I read the first draft of this a couple years back and I thought it was a hot mess back then. We didn’t print it here because I thought the writer needed a second chance. So here is the new version. Give it a read and we’ll talk. The writer calls this a light mystery with serious intent.

CHAPTER ONE

It’s not easy starting your life over when people think you murdered your husband and got away with it. Especially in a place like Morning Sun, Iowa.

The folks in Morning Sun — there’s only about four hundred of them — don’t have much tolerance for weird people, especially a rattlebrained housewife who tries to bail out of her marriage after a couple of little marital “tiffs.”

But I was born and bred in Morning Sun, and on that Fourth of July when my husband Brad came at me with the Ginsu knife we had just bought off a late-night infomercial, I didn’t figure I had a lot of options.

The police believed I killed him. My neighbors believed the police. My relatives believed the neighbors. But fortunately for me, the jury didn’t believe any of them.

So I walked. Actually, I ran.

Three thousand miles to be exact, all the way to Las Vegas. I had to get out of Morning Sun and I figured Las Vegas was a good place to reinvent myself. It’s the kind of town where everyone takes big chances. It’s the kind of place where dwelling on the past is about the only thing that’s really a sin.

Like I was doing now.

I rubbed my neck, pushed Brad out of my head and myself out of my chair. My Payless pinchers were where I had kicked them off when I came back to the office and hour ago. I glanced up at the surveillance monitor. So was Mr. Cranko. He was still planted like a Buddha at blackjack table 15, his sausage fingers ruffling his chips, the ash of his Marlboro about to fall to the green felt.

A tap on the door drew my eye to the door. Pete, my night manager, came in and tossed a yellow paper on my desk.

“Hey boss,” he said. He glanced up at the monitor. “How much is Cranko in?” he asked.

“Twenty-seven thousand,” I said.

Pete shook his head. “How does a Searchlight plumber get that much to play with?”

I shook my head even though I knew Cranko was a meth dealer. Half the lizard people in the desert were. I looked down at the yellow paper.

“How many?” I asked, giving the paper a poke.

Pete shrugged. “Just two. One for panhandling. The other for soliticting.”

“Male or female?”

“We couldn’t tell.”
_______________________________

Okay, we’re back. What is the basic problem here? C’mon, I know you all pay attention when we preach about this at The Kill Zone.

Yup, that’s right. Too much backstory. Too much thinking, remembering, musing, regretting. I wish I had enough room here to show the original version because this is actually much better. But this still isn’t ready for prime time. The protag’s past is interesting, but it’s just that — past tense. We’re already about 350 words in and nothing much is happening IN THE PRESENT. Sure, we get some dialogue and I suppose Pete coming in and interrupting the protag’s thoughts might pass for “action”. But it is interesting? Where is the disturbance in the norm, as James always pleads for?

Okay, true confession. My sister Kelly and I wrote this. It was one of our freshman attempts many many years ago. I found it while cleaning out the hard drive the other day and we decided to drag it out, hit it with the paddles and see if it could be resusitated.

Sigh. I dunno. I really like this protag and the arc of the story we wanted for her — she’s trying hard to make up for some bad life decisions, she’s in a dead-end job in Vegas, and she can’t find a new road forward. Her arc involves not just reinventing herself but also rebuildingg a badly damaged relationship with her dad. But this first chapter is fatally flawed because our desire to impress you with her backstory is getting in the way of the forward motion. SOMETHING HAS TO COMPELL HER TO CHANGE.

But no. We go on for about seven more pages describing the drab old-fashioned casino where she works, her sad attempts to start dating again, and how envious she is of the glamorous new casino, The Monolith, opening next door. So she opens her window and watches the klieg lights, the red-carpet crowds next door. More thinking, regretting, sighing…

Then, guess what happens at the end of chapter 1? Here it is:

I started away from the window.
That’s when I heard the scream.
A second later, I heard the thud of something against metal. My first thought was that something had fallen on the Dumpster in the alley.
But things, inanimate things, didn’t scream.
I went back to the window, and looked up. Nothing but the klieg lights waving like windshield wipers against the navy blue sky. I forced myself to look down.
It was so close to my open window, I could smell the blood.

To make a too long story short, a showgirl has fallen off the roof of the Monolith. Or was she pushed? Well, that’s where the story — and our protag’s story — finally begins to come alive.  Here’s the opening of Chapter 2:

I knew she was dead, but her eyes spoke to me.
They were green, probably from contacts she didn’t need, but an emerald green nonetheless. A red and gold sequined headdress covered her blonde hair, and her long legs were contorted under her. Her black fishnet stockings were caught on the chain-link fence like a giant spider web.
I watched as red feathers floated down, one settling on her forehead, right next to the line of blood that ran from her ear.

So, why am I sharing this? Not for sympathy. We know that if we want to do something with this story, we have a lot of work to do. I’m sharing this so you really understand a couple things about effective openings:

1. Yes, your character’s backstory is important because it provides a context for their arc in your present-tense plot. And you want the reader to care about your protag. BUT…something in the present must trigger the protag’s journey out of the past.
2. Act first and explain later. I think our opening paragraph is fine — it’s a good tease. But we need to find a way to get to the catalyst event — the dead showgirl — more quickly and weave our protag’s backstory into the plot later.
3. Don’t waste time on dialogue and secondary character that do nothing to move your plot along. This means the stuff with Pete and Mr. Cranko has to go. They add nothing. Remember: Your real estate is precious in the early pages. Don’t clutter it up with flaccid dialogue and spear-carriers.
4. Make your protag pro-active not re-active. Part of our character arc is that our protag has always dreamed of being a private detective. But we need to hint at this in chapter 1. Right now, she’s boring. We need to juice her up.
5. First person is tough. Everything is filtered through one POV and man, if your character is moping and groping, who’s gonna care? If you chose first person, make your narrator sing. Even if it’s off-key at first.
6. Don’t make this common mistake: Spend time, pages and energy world-building the norm, then when something bad happens to disrupt it, the reader will care even more. Nope. Hint at a norm but don’t belabor it. Get your plot moving and later, you can layer in the “norm” that has been lost.
7. And find a way to tell us your protag’s name. Big duh for us….we don’t tell you her name until page 23.

Whelp, there you have it. Oh, I forgot one more thing I’d like you to take away from this lesson, maybe the most important thing:

8. Everyone writes crap. We had already published two of our Louis Kincaid series books when we wrote this. What’s weird is neither of our Louis books had these flaws. What happened to us? [I am laughing as I write this] Shoot, I don’t know. I think we got so enamoured of our character and her sad little life back in Morning Sun, Iowa, that we forgot that we needed a plot. In trying to save her, we lost our story. So when you do write something bad — and you will — set it aside, let it bake a few weeks, months or years in the drawer or hard drive. Then pull it out and give it a whiff.

Does it smell like cheese? Then it is. Admit it and try again. To paraphrase Woody Allen, sharks and writers die if they don’t keep moving.