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Scammers targeting grandparentsLAS CRUCES, Jan 15, 2010 (Las Cruces Sun-News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Your football star grandson, tearful, calls from a Niagara Falls jail, detained because his friends were carrying drugs. Your granddaughter calls, asking for help after a bad car accident. They need money -- thousands of dollars, quickly. And they're bogus. A Las Cruces grandmother didn't suspect the worst when she got a call Wednesday from a young man claiming to be her grandson, even though the number that came up on her caller ID was all zeros. "I said, 'Joel?'" recalled 73-year-old Barbara Eaton on Thursday. "He said, 'Yes,' and I said, 'Oh, what a pleasant surprise!' We chit-chatted and he started to cry, he had the sniffles. I said, 'What's wrong?' and he said, 'Grandma, I'm in trouble. You can't tell anybody.'" The man on the phone told her he was in Niagara Falls, Ontario, 1,500 miles from home, and that he and three friends had been detained at the border on drug charges. "He said I would have to send $2,900 to get him out of jail and that he had a lawyer and they were going to go to court and he said I would have to have the money by 3 o'clock," Eaton said. The man then put a woman on the phone who claimed to be a lawyer who instructed Eaton not to send the money through the bank, but to send cash through a Moneygram agent at Walmart. The "lawyer" then passed the phone to a man claiming to be a "robbery patrol officer" who further instructed Eaton. Eaton got off the phone and called her other son for help, but when he called the "lawyer's" number, she hung up on him. "When she hung up on him, he said, 'Mom, this is a scam,'" Eaton said. They went to the bank and put a freeze on Eaton's accounts and called the police. A call to her son revealed the real Joel -- a college student preparing to study law in England -- was, as expected, asleep in his bed. New Mexico Attorney General's Office spokeswoman Lynn Southard said Eaton did the right thing and that a similar deception had been recently reported by an Albuquerque woman who got an e-mailed pitch from someone else claiming to be a grandson in Canada, needing money. "We encourage people not to respond (to such e-mails) because, who knows if something you open, to respond to, could add a virus to your computer," Southard said. Phone scams should be reported to the authorities and anyone answering a similar call for help with fishy details shouldn't feel bad about asking for the person's phone number and verifying it belongs to a police station or lawyer's office -- even if the story tugs at the heartstrings. Eaton said she's certain she's not the only person the con artists tried to fool. "If they're trying to scam us, they're scamming someone else and they're going to get money from someone else," Eaton said. "If it hadn't been for my son, I probably would have sent the money. Anything to help that kid." Ashley Meeks can be reached at [email protected]; (575) 541-5462. Scam and Consumer Advisories -- To report a scam or request a complaint form, e-mail [email protected] or call or visit the New Mexico Attorney General's office, (575) 526-2280 or 201 N Church St., No. 315, Las Cruces If you encounter a scam or fraud, please report it to the Consumer Protection Division by calling (800) 678-1508. To see more of the Las Cruces Sun-News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.lcsun-news.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Las Cruces Sun-News, N.M. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |