A middle-aged woman in Massachusetts had just arrived home after an overnight shift when she picked up a call with a prerecorded message. The recording explained that a “Texas law enforcement agency” wanted to speak with her and told her to hold for further instructions. A person hopped on the line and told her that police found a vehicle registered in her name at a crime scene at an undisclosed location in the state. The truck had bloodstains in it.
The person said that the agency would press charges if she did not cooperate and told her to put several thousand dollars on Google Play gift cards to send to the Texas “agency.” Phone scammers often use this tactic to defraud consumers since the payments cannot be traced. To avoid raising the bank’s suspicions about the uncharacteristically large withdrawal, the caller directed the woman to go to multiple bank branches. All in all, she ended up withdrawing about $5000 from her account. At the fourth branch, frightened and dehydrated, she went inside the bank to ask an employee for water. One person asked her about her errand and got on the phone with the scammer, who quickly hung up.
According to the bank manager, who requested anonymity in order to frankly discuss the alleged fraud, the woman was typically “very sharp” and the scammers caught her at a vulnerable moment. She was just one of many scam victims that sought help from the bank after they’d been bilked. He noted that “at least one” scam…
