A 71-year-old Dearborn Heights man was defrauded out of $1,000 on Jan. 13 by an online predator using a fake pop-up Microsoft screen which promised the user computer virus protection.
When the victim called the phone number shown on his computer screen, he was told to purchase $3,000 in gift cards and provide the code numbers to have his computer viruses removed.
The man went to a local store and purchased $3,000 in gift cards, but only two of the gift cards, cumulatively valued at $1,000, actually had funds loaded onto them.
The fraudster told the man to go to another store to purchase more gift cards, but his intended mark became suspicious and refused to do so.
The victim was advised to contact the store to be reimbursed for the invalid gift cards, and to inform his financial institution about the other transactions.
