A neighbor of mine was scammed out of his life savings - the criminals were verrrrry savvy. They spoofed his bank phone number and called him with ‘security risks’ that were supposedly taking place in real time. He gave his account numbers to stop the theft and then watched online as the thieves took his account down to zero.
He has children who are 100% disabled and this was THEIR care money. Since he gave access - because of the spoofed bank phone number - he is out of luck and his money is gone forever. Just horrifying. He has enough on his plate and how he is bankrupted by these criminal vermin.
There are a few really good guys online who track down these people. I emailed two of them and never heard back.
I’m waiting for the day my MIL gets scammed. She will reply to emails that say “$53.26 has been charged to your Paypal account - please call this number if you did not authorize this.”
“Hello? I got an email - and I don’t even have a Paypal account...”
She does this with all of them, in spite of my wife telling her to not even open them (some can corrupt your computer just by clicking on them).
My son got scammed out of $100 from a text using his Pastor’s phone number. They said he was buying something for the youth group but his card wasn’t working, so could my son put money on some sort of card and he would pay him back.
My son said “Well, it was early and the text woke me up. The text was rush-rush and it sounded like he was in a panic.”
Years and years ago I got a call from some police department saying that the stuff I had bought from Ebay was stolen and that I needed to return it to their police department.
I told them I didn’t know that it was stolen, but if it was I would cooperate fully. I asked them to send me a formal letter on their letterhead with the case number, serial numbers and description of the stole equipment. (Never heard from them.) I seem to recall I thought it was a 50/50 chance that it really was the cops. Silly me.
How very sad. Is there no relief for this person? Their money is gone?
I had an East Indian scammer call me earlier today, told him to pleasure himself and hung up.