Not sure if they are smart or just lucky.
A friend of mine got evicted illegally from the homeless shelter and got a moderately sized settlement which was a challenge for him to receive because he made it to his 50s without ever getting a bank account.
He started getting scam texts from someone who kept needing money to get a bus ticket to visit him and one time claimed to be at the local airport needing money for a cab ride. One of our friends convinced him to take a cab to the airport himself to meet this "person" who wasn't there.
We were thinking that they might have targeted him based on public records but I can say in the last few months I've met five people who are think are scammers sending me DMs on the like of Mastodon, Bluesky and Tumblr.
