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> My dad is not a gullible man

I don’t think you get to say that anymore. It is hard to judge the people we know correctly, but of the many steps, thinking the government would want payment immediately in gift cards must be the biggest gullible jump.

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> thinking the government would want payment immediately in gift cards

But this is not what happened.

> According to Grubbs, there was only one way out: my dad had to convert the money to “government certified gift vouchers,” or gift cards.

Yes it is.

My understanding is that the father was paying off a corrupt individual agent, not making payment to any government agency.

Isn't that just as ridiculous of a notion? A DEA agent shaking down an identify theft victim for Target gift cards, calling from a government phone? It's a hell of a yarn, no matter how you read it.

No? You're saying that someone shouldn't have believed that one kind of scam was happening, because only the other kind of scam is real. That's a much more subtle distinction than just "payment in gift cards is a scam". It also doesn't seem like a thing that can really be supported with definitive evidence or authoritative decree.

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