Reported Senior Phone Scam

Editors Note: This story was submitted by Kristi Deering, whose client is the subject of this story which she requested Kristi 'tell the story'.

Recently a 77 year old widowed woman of Puyallup who wishes to remain anonymous, was swindled out of $3000 in a phone scam. The woman a resident of a senior community in Puyallup said she received a phone call two weeks ago by a young man claiming to be one of her grandsons.

She said when she answered the phone the voice on the other end said "Hi Grandma", the woman said she instantly thought she knew who it was, the voice bared an uncanny resemblance to one of her grandsons. She answered by saying "Hello ******". She had now unknowingly given them a name to identify themselves by.

The caller claimed he was in Canada vacationing with friends and had run into some trouble when they had been in a car accident with a car they had rented. He claimed that the Canadian police had arrested him because he was a foreigner and that he had to hire a local attorney to help him get out so that he could return home. He claimed he needed $3000 for the attorney and asked if she could go to Wal-Mart and wire him the money.

Of course out of concern for her Grandson, she did it. The caller asked her not to tell his parents, that he would rather explain it to them himself when he returned home. She said he gave her a fake name of Glen Sherman to wire the money to, this was supposedly his attorney. She said when she got to Wal-Mart to send the money, the clerk there questioned the transaction and made a comment to the affect that this was a lot of money for a senior and wanted to make sure she knew who this Glen Sherman was that she was sending the money too.

She assured the clerk that everything was fine and sent the money anyhow. The caller called back an hour later and got the reference number from her for the wire transfer and said he would call her later. Later that evening after not hearing from him, she called him on his cell phone to make sure everything was ok.

The Grandson of course had no idea what she was talking about and said he was not in Canada, in fact he had been at work in Auburn all day.

She immediately reported the incident to the police and ironically the next day received her AARP publication in the mail with this article in it, "My Grandson the Crook". This is an increasing scam called "The Grandparent Scam" that is targeting seniors.

Please make all seniors in your life aware of this and ask them to read this article "My Grandson the Crook", and if they get a call from someone claiming to be their grandchild they should make them identify themselves by answering a question that only the real grandchild would know, or tell them they will call them back but not ask them for their phone number.

http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourmoney/scamalert/articles/scam_alert_my_grandson_the_crook_.html