Jun 24 2013

Can Scammers Prey on Your Family?

Do you realize that information you post online can endanger other people who love you?  Because of the growth of social media sites, scammers are able to reap a harvest of private information about family members from children and grandchildren with very little effort.  Many websites make money by recycling information about people and selling it to those who are looking for it.  One example is http://www.whitepages.com.   Try looking up your own information – you may be surprised what you find.

The Call to Grandma

Here is a recent true story that illustrates the this type of scam.  A woman in her 80’s received a call at her home in a senior living apartment.  A police officer said that her grandson Andrew had been arrested in Texas along with several others who were in a van that contained a large amount of drugs.  He said the young man had requested his one phone call to his Grandmother and then he passed the phone to him.  Although he was crying and a little hard to understand, Andy told his grandmother that he was in jail and very scared.  He had not known there were drugs in the car but he had been with the wrong people and was now accused of drug possession along with the others.  A friendly officer had offered to help if he could get $2,100 in cash quickly for a lawyer, and he pleaded with her to send it as soon as possible.  She said she would, so Andy put the officer back on the line and he gave her instructions.

Don’t Tell Anyone

She was to tell no one about the situation because it involved drugs from Mexico and needed to be kept quiet while they investigated.  It also had to be completed within hours, so she was to take the cash to Wal-mart and wire it to him by Western Union.  She agreed and hung up.  The woman was panicked about her grandson going to jail, so she immediately got someone from the facility to take her to the credit union.  As she was withdrawing the money, she told the cashier what she was doing, and the cashier immediately knew it was a scam.  Since this happened was a small Indiana town, the cashier knew her family and contacted one of the daughters, who came to help.  If the woman had been able to get the cash on her own, or if she already had the cash on hand, she surely would have sent it to save the young man.

How Did This Happen?

She really does have a grandson named Andrew, and the man on the phone sounded like him.  Maybe the crying covered his voice just enough to fool her.  When they daughter called to check on him, they found out Andy had not been arrested, and he wasn’t even in Texas.  So how did the scammers get all this information? Andy and his family do a lot of social media postings and include information about other family members as they discuss birthday parties or family events.   The scammers probably found the grandmother’s name in one of the postings, and did a simple online search to get her phone number.  That is all it takes to to initiate this type of crime. Don’t let something like this happen to you or your loved ones.  Be careful about what you post on the internet, or what family members post about you!  Remember – once you post it, everyone has easy access to it, and you cannot get it back.