I was shopping at Walmart for Christmas decorations on Wednesday when I met the nicest lady, she was trying to load dura logs into her cart when I stepped in..."Ms," I said, "Do you need help loading those into your cart?" I asked.
"Oh you know, I'm not sure I want these. My husband might be buying them over at Sam's," she said as she pushed the box back into the stack. "But that was so nice of you to ask, what a gentleman," she said with a slight grin.
We stepped a few yards apart and I still had a grin on my face, "People are so nice here, I've only been here three days and I'm so impressed," I said this over about four people standing between us.
"What are you doing here?"
"Oh, I'm the new TV guy at 12," as I said that about five people turned their heads.
"I need you!" the lady I had just met at the logs shouted. She pushed her cart quickly over to me. "I need your help so bad my mother-in-law was scammed.
The lady, Marge, went into this horrific story of how her mother-in-law was scammed out of $4,500.00.
A young man called her mother-in-law and said, "Grandma, is that you?"
the lady responds with "Mark, Mark is that you?"
"Yea, grandma it's me. Listen I was in a car accident with my friends in Ontario. My parents cant find out they will kill me. Grandma the car is damaged really bad and I'm injured. I need $4,500.00."
Marge went on to say that she really thought it was her grandson on the phone and despite that fact she is on a fixed income and doesn't have that kind of money she had a friend drive her to the same Walmart that we met in and wired this criminal $4,500.00!
That was three weeks ago and she till this day doesn't understand--she still thinks it was her grandson on the phone. Injured and scared.
A week later Marge's mother got a similar call in distress. This is the first story I intend to cover when I start my job next week at KODE. I share it with you in hopes that something like this doesn't happen to your family during the holidays. Scammers are smart and they are evil, typically targeting older people and in a way like this urgent, frightened, injured in a way to go for the emotional kill. It's so sad!
Just a reminder to be extra cautious this time of year!
7 comments:
I dunno, something is so wrong when this happens. Have we let our seniors down? How can they not know this is a scam? This day and age, there is no reason for anyone to not question a phone call like that. Do we not preach to them like we would preach to our teens? Do they not watch the news at least once in a while and not know that this world is not the same as the one they knew 20 years ago? Argh. It makes me angry, but Im not sure at who! No, Im not cold hearted, I feel for those that get scammed. I just feel that we've coddled them to let this happen! They need to understand that soft and fuzzy just doesnt exist and they need to question everyone's motives.
I agree with you. I'm so happy that you followed me over to this blog. We need to find Mike!! This is so much fun. I wish I had thought of this before I left so that I could have linked it over off of my wibw blog.
If I recall right, AG Steve Six warned us on WIBW about a month ago about this scam. I wonder if the Missouri AG did something similar. I know they have a strong elderly fraud unit.
Glad you are doing well already.
We agree? Holy crud, what are we gonna talk about now? :-)
Mike! You found me! I was just saying the other night that we couldn't have a new blog without you on it! I remember AG Six speaking about some scams--I didn't know that he spoke about this one---It's awfully sneaky. PS beware...you're almost that age range for a phone call like that. "Grandma....is that you...it's Brian" LOL
*L* Brian who?
Brian that needs holiday money!
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