Concerned local grandson Justin, who has asked us not to use his last name, wants Cochranites to be on the lookout for scammers like the ones that bilked his 80-year-old grandmother out of $12,000 in cash after posing as him on the phone, saying that he was in an accident and was being charged with manslaughter.
The scammers, posing also as police, called her last week, telling her she needed to pay $30,000 bail, and they needed it in cash, and that someone would come to her house to pick it up.
The local TD Canada Trust in Cochrane did not question his grandmother's reasons for taking out $12,000 in cash over the course of two days.
And on the second day (by then they had called Cochrane RCMP) when they had arranged for a second drop off because they were still short of the $30,000 being demanded, Justin suggested to the cops that they could park down the street and apprehend whomever came to pick up the next installment, they were told that suggestion was quashed by RCMP head office, as they’re not allowed to involve civilians in “sting” operations without prior approvals.
The RCMP did tell him there had been three other people in Cochrane falling for a similar scam over the past week.
His grandma’s ordeal started when she received a phone call from a scammer posing as him that started out explaining that if his voice sounded different it was because he was sick. When she asked “Justin, is that you?” they then had his name, which aided them in fabricating the rest of the story.
The story was that he was in a car accident and was being charged with manslaughter, so the $30,000 would be for bail to keep him out of prison.
The financial bleeding was stopped after three separate withdrawals from her account at TD Canada Trust in Cochrane. (The separate withdrawals were a result of daily transaction limits over the counter and at the ATM).
Justin said he wanted to get their story out as a warning to other seniors.
He also expressed his frustration with the bank for not red-flagging an 80-year-old woman making withdrawals of that nature in cash.
And he’s not convinced the RCMP did all they could and maintains they could have parked an unmarked car far down the street before the second pickup and arrested the scammer after they drove away.
His advice for people who may have alarm bells going off when they get phone calls from strangers:
“These people they just go fishing and sometimes they just stumble across the perfect targets. Every call you take from a stranger you, you can’t take them at their word, you just got to be diligent,” he said.
“You can’t believe anything you see online or hear on the phone from a stranger.”
One piece of advice is when in doubt, or on a phone call and something doesn’t feel right, ask the person for their name and phone number and offer to call them right back. If they don’t want to do that, that’s a big red flag.
When Justin got a call from his grandma asking if he was OK, the scam became apparent, and she called the RCMP.
With a sick husband, a recently deceased son-in-law, and now this, Justin said his grandma is very emotionally vulnerable right now.
“The scammers prey on that,” he said.
Cpl. Gina Slaney of Airdrie RCMP (which covers the Cochrane area for information requests) said she wasn’t aware of recent statistics for the Cochrane area, but offered some advice to people on the lookout for similar scams.
“The most important thing to realize is you should never send money to people you don’t know. And specifically to the RCMP, we will never call and ask somebody for money,” she said.
Bail and similar financial charges will always need to be paid at a courthouse or correctional centre, she added.
“And if a person claims to be a police officer or a judge, call that police service or the courthouse, to verify that person’s identity,” Slaney said.
“And never give out personal information on the phone or online to a person you don’t know.”
