GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Two days after touching down for a vacation in Mexico, Ed and Gloria Szymanski received a late-night phone call, telling them the unthinkable.
Their daughter, who lived in Iowa, had suddenly passed away. They needed to fly back to the States right away, to take their daughter’s body back home to Grand Rapids.
Immediately, the couple dialed Delta Airlines.
“We kept calling, kept calling, and kept calling,” Gloria says.
They were told emergency rates totaled $375, but when they contacted the emergency number on Delta’s website, the person on the other end informed them otherwise.
The Szymanskis said the person claimed no emergency tickets were available. They would have to purchase full-price tickets, at a much steeper rate, if they wanted to get their daughter back to Grand Rapids.
Then, they were told to pass along credit card information. When the first credit card allegedly didn’t work, they submitted numbers for a second, and when they were told the second card didn’t go through, they used the numbers on a third.
“At that point, it was like we just had to get home quickly. Because we were the ones that had to set up for funeral and deal with getting the body back to Michigan and everything. So there was so much to do, and so much to think about. And it was just we did what we thought was the right thing.”
Little did they know, they were speaking not with a Delta representative but a scammer.
Months later, the Szymanskis checked their bills and…
