TIFU by thinking my 90 year old great-uncle was a phone scammmer

Shortly after waking up, I received a text today asking when my mom’s birthday was. I was confused why I’d gotten the message from a random number because pretty much everyone my mom knows, also knows her birthday because she’s on Facebook all the time. What I do get is a lot of Chinese scammers where they ask weird invasive questions like that, so I google the number and the first results all detail phone scams… but not an exact match. I’m still suspicious because the texted hadn’t introduced themselves so I asked if they were trying to get my information. I ask who they are and I get the name.

Now, here’s the thing- for some people, the name might be the thing that sets them off, but I wasn’t convinced at first. See, for one, my uncle’s name is insanely common- you could probably throw it out to any white family and expect them to have someone named that. But most of all, my uncle uses email. My mom says he thinks it works like texting, and whatever, he’s 90 and you can’t really expect him to know technology. I also don’t know how he could’ve gotten my phone number, so that was another thing that made me question.

So I ask him from where. Then… he says my mom’s birthday. Here I am wondering if I fucked up. I google the area code only and… shit that’s the state he’s from. I wait for my mom to get home and ask her if she’s received anything from him.

“No?” Oh shit.

Well, he doesn’t ever text, does he?

“He’s started texting now!”

Okay, let’s compare the numbers… oh shit that’s a match.

I’m mortified. My first message to my 90 year old great uncle, probably one of the most genuine people who had been recovering from a stroke, was implying he was a phone scammer. I can’t even be mad that he didn’t introduce himself because shit, I didn’t even expect him to be able to text!

TL;DR: great-uncle texted my mom wanting to wish her happy birthday, but I didn’t recognize the number and thought he was a phone scammer