Costly ‘grandparent scam’ depletes Bend senior’s savings

Grandparents beware! One Bend woman is out $4,000 after falling victim to the “grandparent scam.” According to the FBI, these scams have victimized seniors since 2008, and with more people on social media, the criminals are getting more clever.

The woman did not want to be identified but did want to share her story to help spare others from a costly lesson.

She said Thursday she heard of the grandparent scam before but never thought it would happen to her.

It all began in March, when she received a call from someone she thought was her grandson. She said he sounded just like him.

The caller said he was in jail in Mexico for driving drunk and getting in a car crash after a wedding.

While this didn’t seem like something her grandson would do — he is a college student with a 4.0 grade average, with a wife and family — she said believed him because she knows people tend to drink too much at weddings.

The caller asked her to wire him $950 so he could get out of jail. He asked his grandmother to keep it confidential and promised he would pay it back with $5,000 he had in savings.

She agreed and wired the money.

The next day, she received another call.

This time, the caller said he was her grandson’s attorney. He said he needed $1,000 to cover her grandson’s hospital bills and another $1,000 to cover the hospital bills for the driver he hit. Once again, she agreed and wired the money.

The next day, the phone rang again.

“We got another call from the attorney, saying the female driver would sue him. He’s a good kid. We couldn’t see him getting sued, so again $1,000,” she said.

She wired nearly $4,000 to her grandson in three days. Then the calls stopped — for a while.

She said she was a little surprised her grandson never called to pay her back, but she figured he was busy and tight on money, as he was just entering a new semester in college.

A month later, she received another call.

It was her grandson again. He said he was involved in an accident at a funeral in Idaho and needed more money.

“He said, ‘I need your help.” (He was) crying. He said, ‘Help me. I need your help,'” the grandmother recalled.

At that moment, she said, she knew it was a scam. She told the caller she had no more money, and he immediately hung up the phone.

She then called her grandson.

“I asked him, ‘Are you in Idaho?’ He said: ‘No, I’m in my bed.'”

Her grandson was never in Idaho, and hadn’t been to Mexico in four years.

“We thought we were intelligent people and it would never happen to us, and we are. We’re educated people,” she explained.

She is now trying to spread the word about the scammers who prey on grandparent’s love for their family.

She contacted her bank and the sheriff’s office, but because the money was wired cash, there’s little they can do.

Her phone bill doesn’t show the phone numbers of incoming calls, so she has no way to trace the calls.

She said the scam has been a financial burden for her, and it’s unlikely she will ever get the money back, although she is grateful her grandson is safe.

According to the FBI, if you receive a suspicious call, it is best to resist the pressure to act quickly. They advise contacting family members to see if the call is legitimate — and warn never to wire money.

For more information on the grandparent scam, visit:https://www.fbi.gov/sandiego/press-releases/2012/beware-of-the-grandparent-scam.