Claudette McClean was 84 years old in 2019 when a strange man wearing a suit and tie knocked on the door of her Brooklyn apartment, where she lived alone.
Claiming to be a representative from her bank, he asked for her “defective” bank card and promised that she’d be receiving a new card in the mail. A cousin who happened to be stopping by to visit McClean intervened just in time, but the exchange left McClean confused, scared and in tears as she called her daughter to share what happened.
That frightened senior was Spotswood resident Gogie Padilla’s mother. And Padilla didn’t take the situation lightly.
“From my mother’s perspective, the man looked the part and could have been the bank manager,” shared Padilla, 57, a former fundraiser in New York City. “We were lucky that our relative had been there to step in, but the incident made all of my siblings very fearful because had she not been there, who knows what could have happened?
“While this man was over the top in coming to my mom’s door,” she continued, “my siblings and I realized that my mother’s phone had been the access point; we confirmed that he’d called her several times and gotten pieces of information from her every time. This is the pathology used by these criminals – to gain the trust of and almost become like a friend to their intended victims – and I’m sure that my mom innocently told him the name of her bank.”
A growing problem
Padilla’s mother isn’t alone.
