A Terrifying Scam and the System That Made It Possible

"A forty-six-year-old special-education coördinator in South Carolina, Gore was mostly in great shape, but after three Cesarean sections her abdominal muscles were weak, and she sometimes experienced discomfort and sharp pain. She had been diagnosed with a prolapsed uterus, and her gynecologist performed a partial hysterectomy, but that surgery didn't fix all of Gore's problems, and the mystery caller that day seemed to know every intimate detail of her ongoing symptoms: urinary-tract infections, tingling and numbness, and pain during intercourse."

""You have a ticking time bomb in you," the woman on the phone told Gore menacingly, explaining that her symptoms stemmed from the mesh sling that her gynecologist had placed during surgery. Gore hadn't even known there was mesh in her body. She assumed that the caller was with Boston Scientific, a company that she was told had manufactured the mesh, and which was now proposing to remove it, apparently at no cost, so long as she signed a few forms."

Product-liability claims can secure compensation for people harmed by corporate products, but settlement systems are complex and opaque, creating opportunities for fraud. Scammers contact claimants with detailed medical knowledge, posing as company representatives or service providers and offering procedures or payouts in exchange for signed forms. Vulnerable claimants can be coerced into surrendering rights or accepting inadequate resolutions. The pelvic-mesh context shows callers persuading women that implanted devices must be removed and promising coverage, while settlement intermediaries and mass-tort structures can obscure accountability and enable exploitation. Stronger oversight, transparency, and claimant protections are necessary to prevent abuse.

Read at The New Yorker