Once upon a time, my phone ringing generally meant someone wanted to talk to me. Yeah, you had telemarketers, but they were a mild annoyance at most, especially since it wasn't like my phone rang all the time from people trying to sell me something.

These days, though, it's scam after scam. Either they're trying to talk to me about a car accident I never had, trying to get me to buy Medicare supplemental insurance from them, or they're from Microsoft technical support and my computer is sending them a signal that something is wrong.

Scams are everywhere these days.

Yet it seems one scam turned deadly.

An 81-year-old Ohio man has been charged in the fatal shooting of an Uber driver he believed was working with a scammer, according to officials who said the victim was sent to the home by the same scammer.

William Brock told investigators he shot Loletha Hall, 61, outside his home March 25 because he thought she was working with a man who called him pretending to be an officer at the local court, Lt. Kristopher Shultz of the Clark County Sheriff's Office said.

"Mr. Brock received some scam call by a person purporting to be someone from our courts who informed him a family member was incarcerated and that he had a bond of a significant amount of money," Shultz said. "The calls turned from 'I'm an officer in the court' to 'We have this subject hostage, this is a ransom demand.'"

The person who called Brock, or an accomplice, requested an Uber ride to his South Charleston home to pick up the money, Shultz said.

"Ms. Hall did not have any idea," he added.

Brock confronted Hall with a firearm and took her cell phone so she couldn't call for help. When she tried to get away, Brock shot her.

There's no evidence that Hall threatened Brock in any way, and there's dashcam video of the encounter, so there probably would be.

Now, let's get into all of this mess for a moment.

Brock is charged and from everything we know, he should have been. While he likely thought Hall was involved in the situation, you can't just shoot everyone you think is involved in a criminal activity. If we did people would justify every shooting with "I thought he stole something" or some other pathetic excuse.

Especially when you look at the details:

“When she tried to get away, he shot her once, then there was more exchange between them," Shultz said. "Mr. Brock was at some point injured to his head, and he shot Ms. Hall a second time. There was more conversation, and then he shot her a third time. Only after he shot her a third time did he then make contact with authorities to report the incident."

No, Brock screwed up by the numbers, but he's also an 81-year-old man who someone convinced that a loved one was in danger. 

As a result, the scammer or scammers are culpable to some degree. They engineered the situation, called for an Uber which put Hall where she was, and are at least partially responsible for the shooting as well.

My hope is that they find this scumbag and all his scumbag buddies. I hope they're charged and convicted with such a sentence that they never see the light of day again. I've always hated scammers, but that was before their crap resulted in an innocent woman being killed.

May they burn in hell.