My mother was almost phone scammed last week..

kelleyil — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:31:24 GMT

It's called the Grandma Scam, I guess it's been around for a couple of years, but it hit the Chicago area last week. My mother got a call at 10:30 in the a.m., heard "Grandma, grandma, you have to help me." My mother has 7 grandsons, couldn't figure out who it was, bad connection, kid was "hysterical" in her words. So she said "Jimmy" (not real name) is that you? He said yes, he was in jail, he was in a car with friends, they got stopped for a traffic violation, cops found drugs in the trunk, which he didn't know about. "Please don't tell my parents, they'll be mad at me, please help me." He supposedly needed $3,000 wired, via Western Union within a matter of hours.

So my mother (who's 84) took the instructions, got in her car, and went to a currency exchange. They said they were not WU. So she found a WU, they told her their lines were down (I think they knew this was a possible scam), since she was supposed to wire the money, per the lawyer, to Ecuador. Since she didn't know what else to do, and she had to get the money to them quickly, she drove to my brother's house (father of Jimmy) and told him and his wife they had to bail the kid out. My brother believed the story, at first, and got his wife out of the shower and dressed to rush to the police station. That's when the Ecuador part of the story came out. My nephew had just been helping my mother with yardwork the day before. So my brother calmed everyone down, called his son, who answered his cell phone, and said he had just gotten up, was getting ready to go to work. This is a 27 yr. old guy, who bought his own home at age 25, and is reliable and trustworthy. All of a sudden, my mother realized she had been scammed. Now she's angry with herself to having fallen for this, as she thinks of herself as a savvy and sharp person.

All's well that ends well, I guess. Her next door neighbor is a police officer, and my mother didn't think to report this, since no money was lost. I think law enforcement should be notified so they can alert banks and such institutions that this scam has hit the area.

One of my sister's friends said it was all over the news last week. Never wire money to anyone you don't know, no matter what they tell you on the phone. Seems obvious, doesn't it?

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My mother was almost phone scammed last week..