JOHNSTON COUNTY – A Johnston County resident recently fell victim to an online romance scam. The 70 year-old woman said she was contacted by a person on social media claiming they were General Douglas with the United Nation Peace Corps.
After corresponding for several days, the impersonator asked the woman to send $1,000 in gift cards. The victim did as requested, only later to learn she had been scammed.
According to the United Nation website, many fraud schemes falsely claim association with the UN in order to try to obtain money or personal information. The schemes may come through social media, email, phone calls, postal mail, or on websites.
The most common schemes are romance scams, employment scams, and confidence scams.
She should be happy to ONLY lose $1,000 before somebody told her it was a scam. Some women lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in these scams.
People please check on your older relatives and neighbors. They are being directly targeted by criminal scammers every day.
This is so sad. Please inform your elderly friends about these scams..
I’ve been contacted by Elon Musk this week wanting me to invest in some kind of project that I can make millions on…and Ellen said I won a sweepstakes and she needed certain information in order to get my prizes to me….LOL…they are getting slick these days….unless YOU make the call…don’t EVER give your information out to anybody …I’ve even had them pretend to be my bank and tell me they needed my SS number to verify that I’m me so they can stop an unusual transaction…I gave them the last 4 and they pressed for the whole thing…
I hung up and called my local office…it WAS a scam…