I've been scammed

Just remember, no matter where its coming from - "if it sounds too good to be true, guess what - you can bet it is"!

When grand daughter was in Hawaii got a call that she was in jail and didn't want "dad" to find out about it...long tear jerking story...send $2,000 right away to get her out. Call this lawyer's number and give them a credit card #.

Called "dad" instead and he said he had just talked to her and she was fine. Someone had rifled through her purse, and found her phone with our number in it while she was in a yoga class on the big island.

Gotta be watchful these days.
 

Forgot to mention that John even "tried" calling his son's C.P. But he could not get an answer just to make sure he was ok. So like me, he thought this was legit. When he got to talking with his sheriff in his house. He said Tom You will not believe all the scams that are out there and as his sheriff said they are getting smarter every day. They had a way to "block" his international C.P. He said here in the states they can't block them so much as the carriers have lots of protection built into the towers.

This morning in our Sunday paper there were 5 people that have gotten scammed this past week in different ways. So they are trying to warn people to be very careful this time of year.

I remember on our old "Seniors Playground" form back about 7 years ago we got hit with a lot of people's info that was stolen. So the owner knows computer & worked for the government before he retired. He said this will stop. so he locked down the form. When you looked at the web address it had HTTPS so the (S) said secure. The only way to get into it was by invitation & then the owner did a lot of checks on that person.
 

Our local news (Phoenix) has warnings ALL THE TIME about these scams and how "older" people are being targeted and falling victim to this. They warn that if it involves buying gift cards...BEWARE. If making money sounds too good to be true, then it's a scam. Sorry you got caught up in this. I no longer belong to Facebook or any other social media group. It's too dangerous.
 
Tom 86 said:
He got scammed also, but for $15,000.00. He was telling me they called him & they wanted a bank draft to get his son out of jail
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A similar scam was tried on my daughter's paternal grandfather. He got a call that she was in jail in another state and had a broken nose. The paternal relatives didn't send the scammer any money but they spent hours contacting jails and arranging a plastic surgeon for her nose. They finally decided to try my daughter's cell phone, and my daughter, who was getting her nails done in the college town / state where she should be, answered and had no idea what they were talking about!
 
I'm a scammer's worst nightmare. (I answered and tried to solve tech problems for 35 years @ work). My hearing went bad, have dual aids but the phone creates a whistling noise so I seldom answer. I now have only an emergency flip phone that's usually turned off. If and that's a big if I even answer in the 1st place the caller needs to speak English and enuciate clearly, if not I simply hang up. Being old, tech experienced and retired has it's pluses.
 
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A fellow & I email on the rare occasion. I noticed some fake emails with an address similar to his and just deleted them. When I final got around to telling him, he said he got scam emails from me too. Now we have a code in the message line so we know that it’s safe to open.
 
Tom 86 said:
I can't trash the message yet, as F.B. & my sheriff wants it for proof.
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I understand. You can put it in a folder to save it. This way its not actually in your email endbox list. Any new ones coming into your email asking for anything just trash it. If you dont buy anything online you know its someone trying to get your money. If you have any questions post it with a title like "Is this spam and scam" . This way others can learn about it as well. I may start one myself with a spam email I got. Well, I had blocked and deleted the last ones I got last week. Anyway, post it somewhere here so others can help out
 
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My DIL put it in a ?? file on Messenger so it would not be seen but available to the sheriff.

Now the kicker. She is back on my messenger asking for the $3,000.00 I promised. I guess my bank did shut off $3,000.00 before she cashed them.

She's threatening to send the police to my house. I'm not answering any of her posts on my messenger. My DIL is coming over very soon to take care of her. DIL lives about 500 ft from me.
 
Thanks you so much for this post Tom, I'm sure it will help many other seniors to beware of these despicable thieves. They have been using the same tactics in Sydney for years and our seniors have lost thousands of dollars.
 
Very common scam, never take anything coming from the internet as factual. Set your privacy level as high as possible and take into consideration FB accounts are hacked by the thousands every hour. I do use it but don’t have my personal info like— where I live, birthday etc available for anyone to see.

One piece of advice is to put a permanent freeze on your credit, you can unfreeze it for a few days if you need to borrow money from a new lender. Your current financial institutions can access your history but no new credit will be approved. That means no one can scam an insurance company using your info, for instance my late FIL gave out some info in a phone call from a scammer. Next week his name, SS number, and identity was used to issue a policy on a car. If we weren’t well versed in how to handle it from a previous incident of identity theft, no telling what may have happened. If a drivers license is involved get the number changed immediately. It took four months to get it cleared up.

Be vigilant!
 
DIL took care of it real fast. Don't know what she did but she sure did a lot of typing at different sites.

I've had all three credit places frozen about 15 years ago. So they can't get anything there.

DIL said I should tell people here on this site that They might be next since I've put so much info about myself on here. So PLEASE do all you can to protect your $$$
 
Tom, im very sorry you've had to deal with this crook. But great thing is your DIL is a life saver.

Also, just a heads up scammers use Amazon as well. I just got one this morning. I never click if there is a question to its validity and safety of the link.

We can never be to careful with clever crooks .
 

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Pauline1954 said:
Tom, im very sorry you've had to deal with this crook. But great thing is your DIL is a life saver.

Also, just a heads up scammers use Amazon as well. I just got one this morning. I never click if there is a question to its validity and safety of the link.

We can never be to careful with clever crooks .
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Something to check on Amazon every once in a while is your profile settings ... Make sure it all looks correct.

I'm the any person on my Amazon account, and yet when I've checked my settings, I have had a "Jim" listed under my name once, and another time it said "child" ....
 
Bonnie said:
Something to check on Amazon every once in a while is your profile settings ... Make sure it all looks correct.

I'm the any person on my Amazon account, and yet when I've checked my settings, I have had a "Jim" listed under my name once, and another time it said "child" ....
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Thanks for the heads up. I just checked my profile and my wife's and they are both OK.
 
Tom 86 said:
My DIL put it in a ?? file on Messenger so it would not be seen but available to the sheriff.

Now the kicker. She is back on my messenger asking for the $3,000.00 I promised. I guess my bank did shut off $3,000.00 before she cashed them.

She's threatening to send the police to my house. I'm not answering any of her posts on my messenger. My DIL is coming over very soon to take care of her. DIL lives about 500 ft from me.
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Just a suggestion...maybe you should get off of Facebook or at least turn off Messenger. :)
 
Several months ago, I turned on to Netflix and someone else's name was in the profile! They had rented a movie so I called Netflix and they told me how to fix it and I deleted my account and started over with a new CC. Now I have a password to sign on. How did someone get into my account???
 
Colleen said:
Just a suggestion...maybe you should get off of Facebook or at least turn off Messenger. :)
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My DIL did that last night so no more messanger for me. My Facebook is so locked down from all the things she did to it she said now your like Ft. Knox.

I did get to call my bank about my $3,000.00. took me about 1/2 hr talking to 2 different men about what happened. They both took a lot of info about the vanilla gift cards. glad I had saved them to my phone & also into my picture file here on the computer. As they wanted pictures of front & back of all the cards. easy to do.

When the last man said you WILL get your $3,000.00 back but it could take a month, & he issued me a fraud account number just for my case. He told me to go ahead & pay that off like I usually do every billing cycle so I don't have any interest to pay.
They will contact me about a week before the funds are put back into my C.C. account so I can be watching for them.

They both showed me a video way to "Lock it" as they call it from my C.P. so if I ever lose or my card gets stolen then I whip out my C.P. get into my bank account with my fingerprint then go to C.C. & hit "lock it" & no more charges can be added to it. They helped me set up my C.P. security so no one can ever get into it without my fingers (won't say which ones).
 
Update on my scam.
My Attorney General has now got the case & gave me a case number. My DIL sent a bunch of PDF files & pictures this woman used. She is in the USA so they can prosecute her.

I got a printout of what the gift cards were used for & DIL sent to A.G. Some went to "Tory Burch" on PayPal with a Paypal number that can be traced according to my A.G. Some went to Nordstrom again with a tracking number on them.

So this woman was either a first-time scammer or stupid according to the A.G. They will get her now with all these purchases that can be traced. A.G. said I might or might not get my $2,000.00 back from the ones I bought at CVS But she will try very hard.
This is what my DIL wrote to the A.G. sent it yesterday & I got a replay back this afternoon.
=================================================

Good afternoon -

Please find attached the information you requested about the case referenced as to how I was scammed. My daughter-in-law is typing this information for me.

On Nov 26th I was contacted on FB Messenger by who I thought was a friend, but it was a fake account. Please see attachment "Evelyn Beaver". The real one is a friend of mine, but someone created a new account in her name. She told me a "Beverly Page" would be contacting me to get me a government grant for 175K for free. So then Beverly contacted me. Unfortunately, I deleted that entire string on messenger. But "Beverly" convinced me that she needed ALL sorts of information, name, address, DOB, monthly income, etc. And I gave it to her. She then said I was approved but had to go buy $2,000 in gift cards at $500 each and send her all of the card numbers. Pictures are attached. Then she wanted another $3,000 and I couldn't get any more at CVS, so they told me to get them on the Vanilla website, so I did. Attached are those cards as well as the transaction records. I noted that on the "Vanilla Gift Cards" attachment a "Tory Burch" Paypal is on those receipts as taking the funds off of the cards. I sent them copies of the receipts so I have canceled my credit cards so those numbers can't be used.

There are also pics attached of the pics they sent me telling me that the FedEx truck that had my money was being held so they needed more $ and they continued to try to reach me for many days after. Unfortunately for them, I had my daughter-in-law come over and she helped get everything is taken care of so they don't get any more $ from me. I did call the Clinton County Sheriff's office and the incident # is S21-09847. I don't know if there is anything else that you can do. I'm 86 and on a fixed income and I certainly got taken for a ride with this scam.

I can be reached at ***-***-1414 or ************* Thank you so very much for your help and hopefully, you can catch them!!!

Thomas Marcinko
 
If nothing else, they will catch and punish this woman. Glad the AG is on this.

Being that she was so stupid, she may try to say that someone else used her identity or sold her the cards and she was a victim too.
 
Jules said:
If nothing else, they will catch and punish this woman. Glad the AG is on this.

Being that she was so stupid, she may try to say that someone else used her identity or sold her the cards and she was a victim too.
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Not really. As those cards can be traced to where I bought them & sent to her. Even though I deleted the messenger texts that's not to say the A.G. or government can't resurrect them. Nothing is truly deleted.
 


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