I have always thought that the lowest form of crime committed by cowards is theft.

Back in 1989, I owned a house in Bear Creek Lakes in Jim Thorpe that was vandalized.

The front door lock was broken and inside a television, VCR, and assorted smaller things were taken. The shed outside had a Master lock that was crowbarred open and all of my fishing equipment was stolen.

The good news was the vandals did not destroy anything.

Nevertheless, I had made a call to the state police that brought an officer to my house.

“It’s highly doubtful we’ll catch the guy or whoever had done this,” he said as he wrote up his report. “There’s no evidence to go on. The best we can do is to see if there’s a rash of robberies around here and hope that somebody sees something. We’ll let you know.”

If you have had your house vandalized, you just never feel the same comfort inside. You worry the thieves are coming back. You go to bed and every noise you hear keeps you awake. The crime happens again and again inside your head.

Theft of all sorts is skyrocketing in America. In 2022, the National Insurance Crime Bureau reported that 932, 329 vehicles were stolen the year before.

General theft has increased by 22% in 2023 from the year before. One in every three Americans suffer identity theft.

Their credit card numbers are stolen and when thieves gain access to their social security numbers, bank accounts are emptied.

Eight years ago, someone purchased a large screen TV, a computer, and a patio set with my credit card numbers in Indiana.

I had to get a lawyer to confirm I was coaching Little League Baseball in Jim Thorpe when the infraction occurred to prove it wasn’t me who had mad the purchases.

Each day I get several calls that my phone says could be scammers. On my computer I get emails with fake invoices that say my bank card has been charged $400 or more and if I want a refund, there’s a number to call to pay my way out of the charge.

I write return emails to these scammers that say. “Does your mother know that you cheat people for a living?” The emails are always returned as “failure to send.”

Americans lost nearly $5 billion in investment scams last year and impostor scams took another $2.7 billion out of our citizens’ pockets. Last year 514,300 people in this country reported being scammed of their money.

Cyber stealing is a crime that largely goes unpunished. Authorities say that many scammers are doing their business from overseas and those in our country are always moving their locations so they are nearly impossible to catch.

What’s behind all of this stealing is an obvious lack of conscience. If someone scams thousands of dollars, perhaps the entire life savings, from a naïve elderly couple and he or she can sleep soundly at night proves indifference to ruining the couple’s senior years.

One elderly woman said she was going to commit suicide if the investment business he was representing left her with no money. The scammer reportedly said, “Get me the money before you kill yourself.”

One of the latest cyber theft operations is a romance scam where a man contacts a woman online, gets her to believe he is romantically interested in her, earns the woman’s trust and then gets her to send him thousands of dollars to pay for his travel expenses to meet her. As soon as he receives her money, he’s nowhere to be found.

In his book, author Robert D, Hare says that scammers are psychopathic and often beyond help for restoring a moral conscience. “Most therapy programs do little more than provide psychopaths with new excuses and rationalizations for their behavior. They may learn new and better ways of manipulating people.”

I’m wondering what makes someone not care about stealing from good people. Are they born that way? Were they not taught right from wrong by their parents? Why is there such an alarming increase in the number of people who couldn’t care less about scamming others from their life’s savings, leaving them destitute and heartbroken?

Hare writes, “We are far more likely to lose our life savings to an oil-tongued swindler than our lives to a steely- eyed killer.”

Those without conscience are not just stealing money from us. Some are shooting up our schools and shopping malls.

On a much smaller scale of unconscionable behavior, I’ve seen a woman at a professional baseball game push over a small child who was about to catch a foul ball so she could catch it.

Even more distressing is family stealing money from family. Kids stealing bicycles from other kids. These are not isolated incidents. Add the fact that each year, one out of 50 children, over one million minors, have their social security numbers stolen and are victims of identity theft.

Whether it be a lack of parenting, no moral influences or an adrenaline rush to steal something, the end result is we no longer can trust our fellow Americans. Author, Lynn Barber wrote, “I have learned not to trust people. I’ve learned not to believe what they say, but watch what they do … to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of living a lie … that people when you think you know them well are ultimately unknowable.’

The only thing that we can do is be careful, keep up our guards, and be left wondering what has happened to the conscience of our country.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com.