PRINCETON – A Johnston County senior citizen was the victim of fraud after attempting to use her computer to access Amazon.com.
Over the summer, the elderly woman placed a shoe order through Amazon. After several weeks, the package didn’t arrive so she decided to log onto her Amazon account to check the status of the order.
Unfortunately, the victim typed in the wrong website address and was diverted to a fake Amazon website.
The victim called a phone number on the website. Instead of checking on her order, the scammers tricked the elderly woman into thinking she had inappropriate computer activity on the “dark web” and needed to pay to have it corrected.
The victim withdrew all the money from her bank account, $22,000, and then withdrew the maximum amount from her credit card, $13,000, and purchased BitCoin, as instructed. She then sent the BitCoin account information to the scammer.
The victim waited 4 months to report the incident to law enforcement.
Amazon.com has a Scam Prevention Page alerting consumers to recent scams and how to protect yourself.
This makes me sad, and really mAd. She didn’t know and they took advantage of that. She was trying to do the right thing. Taking advantage of someone’s ignorance is just wrong. How do they sleep at night? Better sleep while you can scammer….cause when you get to h e l l ……burn baby burn..
Just soooooo sad. The criminal scammers will not stop until everybody stops falling for their scams. Please check on your elderly relatives.