Greg's Corner

Man saved from grandparent scam by store owner

By Greg Collier

Typically, when we talk about the grandparent scam, either a victim has been taken for a lot of money, or there’s been a new method used in the scam. This time we’re bringing you reasonably good news for once as an attentive store owner has prevented an elderly man from falling victim to the scam.

Before we get to that, we always talk about how the scam works. While the grandparent scam has a number of variations, they all basically follow the same tactic. A scammer will call an elderly victim and pose as one of the victim’s grandchildren. The phony grandchild will claim that they’ve gotten in some kind of legal trouble, usually a DUI where someone was injured. If the victim claims that the caller doesn’t sound like their grandchild, the caller will say their nose was broken and that’s why they sound different. As with most scams, the goal is to get the victim to give money to the scammers. In the grandparent scam, the impostor grandchild will ask for bail money or legal fees that often total into the thousands of dollars. Over the past few years, it’s become one of the more prolific scams across the country.

More recently, places like banks and stores that sell gift cards have become wary to these scams and have saved victims from losing their life savings. In Pennsylvania, an owner of a UPS store saved a man from losing $12,000 to the scam. The owner could tell the package the man was asking to have delivered was full of cash, but the victim claimed the package contained documents and pleaded the store owner to just send the package. The package was supposed to be delivered to an attorney’s office to get the victim’s grandson out of jail, but the store owner showed the man that the address it was being sent to was an apartment building. The store owner was able to locate the man’s grandson on social media and was able to call him to prove he wasn’t in jail. The scammers had asked for $12,000 that the man had almost sent to them.

Unfortunately, not every store and bank employee knows the telltale signs of this scam, so many people need to protect themselves instead. If you or someone you know receives one of these phone calls, it’s best to hang up and contact the person the scammers are claiming to be. Scammers will try to pressure you into staying on the line, however, if someone is truly in a legal jam, it’s not going to make matters worse if you make additional calls to verify their story.

Again, we ask that if you know an elderly person or couple who live alone and do not have access to the internet, please let them know about this scam.