my grandmother scammed by a "car handyman" for about 6k. she was embarrassed, but the scary thing was that she took the guy to her house to get the check to may him. she took the check made it out to cash and then drove to the bank with him in the car and cashed the check. Scary. My dad is an ex trooper and he finally convinced her to call the police in the hopes that somewhere during the trip with him in the car maybe a camera caught his image, they did dust for prints as well, but wasn't able to get anything. which is a shame, as he'l find someone else to scam.

yesterday at work, I got a phone call the SSA stating that my benefits had been stopped. as a result of a federal investigation. I knew it was a scam, I get these call daily... but I figured Id play along just to see what goes on.

I gave them a fake name, which should have tipped them off, but they continues, gave them a fake SS number, I gave them real bank names (not mine) and fake amounts in each account. Gave them a fake zip code and fake street address. T

he end game is that they want you to have you funds be kept in a safe place to keep them separate from the fbi investigation. they wanted me to leave my work right then go to the bank withdraw my money and put it on a refillable credit card. and they wanted me to keep them on the phone the entire time to make sure i wasn't fleeing....

I guess then you would give them the card numbers and the pin on the back and your money would be gone just like that...

if they didn't have such a thick indian accent, they do sound very convicing and I could understadn how someone who's older and worried about loosig their benefits and identity theft, ect. might be able to get suckered. but

when my grandmother got scammed, my mom basically took away her ability to write a check for over 500 bucks. anything over 500 has to have a double signature.

a lot of her bills are not electronic bases so mom and can review and pay through the online portal at the bank,, suck for mom to have to extra work, but as long my GM is living semi independently its whats gotta happen

I really hope there is a special place in hell for these folks...

The only thing I'll add is that my FIL fell for a scam a while ago - more than 5 years - and his entire family will not let it go. They bring it up constantly, if a scam is mentioned in any way at all everyone turns and stares at him, my brother in law sends every "new scam" alert to the group text. It's just too much. your poor mom is embarrassed and upset and I'd just argue that lording it over her for years to come isn't the best thing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is so much information on line (Spokeo, White Pages, Facebook, obituaries) with names, ages, relatives, addresses, etc., that it wouldn’t be hard for a scammer to figure out who the older and young adult relatives are and use that to their advantage in conning someone.

But to know OPs grandmother was in the hospital? If a true story must be someone who knows this family.

She said later that wasn't what happened, but it certainly could be. Scammers can figure those things out from social media or crowd funding sites.

This exact scam happened to my former boss’s mom who was in her 90s. Sorry to hear it happened to your parents.

Anonymous wrote:This happened with DH's family except it was his sister's inlaws who were called- and they are incredibly cheap (have money/don't spend it easily). So when they got the call that the grandson (SIL's son) was in a Mexican jail and needed tens of thousands- SIL's inlaws then called the OTHER inlaws (SIL and my DH's parents) to ask them to pay!

"Grandson needs help and we are sure you can pay! Thanx!" My inlaws are smart/knew it was BS (had just seen him the night before- he's very bookish and not the type to randomly run to Mexico, do drugs, drink or get arrested) so they just kept repeating to the inlaws that he was fine and that they should call him if they wanted to hear his voice- and to ignore the calls. They then said they didn't want to call as it was long distance- haaaaa! "Hey, can you pay this lawyer $50G- because we are too cheap to spend $1 on a phone call checking this out with our grandson?"... we are all still laughing about this.

This is hilarious 🤣