Like hundreds of Canadian seniors this year, Ilene Lawson received a terrifying phone call she won’t soon forget.
She was told her granddaughter had been in a car accident and a loaded gun was found in the trunk. She was now in police custody.
“I was freaking out. I was totally freaking out,” said Lawson at her home in Mississauga, Ont. “I was shaking, which is not normally me. All I could think about is my granddaughter being a cell, locked up in there.”
The caller told Lawson her granddaughter would be released if she paid a $10,000 dollar cash bond. But she was told there was a gag order and she had to keep quiet.
It was only after she handed over the money, she realized it was all a lie.
She is now sharing her story in the hope that no one else will fall victim to the scam.
“Every night when I go to bed I relive it,” she said.
Police across the country are seeing a rise in criminals preying on fears of the elderly with what’s known as grandparent scams.
They say fraudsters are no longer just collecting by wire transfer.
“What we’re seeing locally is that there’s an in-person element. It’s not just online, and that’s concerning to me,” said Cpl. Laura Hirst of the Burnaby RCMP in B.C.
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) says from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31 in 2022, there were 1,352 reports of ‘emergency’ scams, resulting in more than $4.5 million in losses. That’s almost twice the losses in all of…
