CLAYTON – In an all too common occurrence, a senior citizen was tricked into sending money from their life savings to a scammer. Police are investigating.
The 72 year-old Clayton resident told police she was contacted by a man with a Middle Eastern accent. He claimed her Amazon account had been hacked and someone made illegal purchases charged to her.
The suspect convinced the victim to give access to her computer through an Anydisk program. He then told her that he was going try and recover some of the money that had been spent during the hack.
The scammer claimed they mistakenly placed $40,000 into her account and that her bank account would be frozen until the money was returned.
Believing the story was true, she wired $9,950 to the suspect and then $15,000 sometime after the first transfer. Upon being requested to transfer more funds, the victim began to suspect she was being scammed.
The incident wasn’t reported to for several weeks. It remains under investigation by detectives.
Anytime someone says they “accidentally” put money in your account, say, “Thank you” and hang up
These calls go out all day, every day! It is simply a numbers game to the criminal scammers. If the scammers make 1,000,000 calls and they only get 1% to fall for it, that is still 10,000. They can make a million calls very easily with their autodialers.
In this article, the criminals stole $24,950 from one elderly lady! Imagine how much incentive to keep on calling that this gives these criminal scumbags. Even if only 0.1% fall for it, that is still 1,000 victims. (1,000 x 24,950 = 24,950,000) This is what keeps them going.
They will NOT stop until everybody stops falling for their scams! Talk to all of your elderly relatives and let them know about all the scams going on. Please!
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE listen to Jessica Vance, she is 100% correct with what she is saying and her stats. This can be prevented if you know an elderly person by asking them if they have any questions at all to contact a close family member, the bank or the police to see if this is Lagid though the answer will be its not Lagid at all.