POWAY, Calif. (KGTV) — A local family said scammers were able to steal their life savings through a fake Amazon purchase and bank wire transfers.
William and Ave Bortz have been married for more than 55 years. “I’m looking forward to the next 55,” Ave Bortz said.
They were hoping to live out their golden years on the money they saved over the years and the profit from a recent home sale. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.
“I was not brought up to believe [that] people would lie with that level of bad faith,” William Bortz said.
It started in January of last year. They said they got an email that looked like it was from Amazon. It said they purchased around $1,500 worth of products being sent to a different address. The email requested a call to a 1 (866) phone number to fix the issue. “I took over the phone call,” William said.
The person on the other end of the phone convinced William to allow access to their computer. It’s something their daughter, also named Ave, explained did not seem unusual to her parents. “My husband had always fixed it from San Diego to LA. so he was used to seeing his computer remote accessed,” she said.
She detailed how the scam worked, saying that the crooks showed her parents a fake Amazon website that said he spent money on a product. To get the money back, her parents had to type in the amount that was spent in a certain part of the website.
Instead, the fake website showed that her parents had spent $200,000 at Amazon…
