NORWICH – An elderly woman fell victim to an international scam in Norwich last week, losing more than $1,000, and now police are warning people to be careful.
The incident began when an elderly woman received a call for a man claiming to be an official from Canada. The man told the woman her grandson was in jail and was too embarrassed to call his parents. The man said the grandson needed a couple thousand dollars for bail money and asked her to wire the funds using a routing number.
Police Chief Joseph Angelino said the caller knew personal information such as the names and relations of family members, their occupations and the grandson’s general traveling plans. Before the woman could confirm the information with other relatives, Angelino said, she wired an undisclosed amount of money to the account number.
“We’re sorry this happened, but there’s not much we can do. It’s not like a shoplifting case or a stolen bike where we can lay hands on a criminal and on evidence. The jurisdiction issues exceed our resources and then there’s actually proving what individual actually picked up the money at the other end,” said Angelino.
Angelino said past scams included con men calling for bail money and posting “too good to be true” offers online for car parts and antiques, to name a few. The chief speculated that scammers were utilizing social networking sites to acquire people’s names, dates of birth, phone numbers, addresses, relevant relationship information and traveling habits in making the phony calls as believable as possible.
“We’re saddened every time it happens. Something I tell people whenever I get a case like this is, ‘I’ll take this as far as I can, but you have to know the chances of finding out who’s done this or getting you money back is near zero,’” said Deputy Chief Rodney Marsh.
“This is their job. Their job is to search the information out there and piece it together into a picture of someone’s family life and prey on them using resources available to everyone. These people cast a broad net worldwide and if they contact a thousand people and get a tiny percentage to respond they get thousands of dollars,” said Angelino.
Police said the only sure way to avoid becoming a victim is to never transfer money to a unknown third party. Regardless of their claims, people should independently verify the circumstances.
“The callers always play on someone’s interest in a product or tug at the heartstrings,” said Angelino.
“If it’s too good to be true or if people are demanding you send money without ever seeing the product, alarms should go off. These scams always promise the money is held in a third party account for safe keeping, pending the customer’s satisfaction. The frauds can seem just as legitimate as the real thing and include fake accounts, numbers and documents,” said Marsh.
Angelino recommended that anyone finding themselves in doubt should use common sense and contact their local police for guidance.
“In the past the Norwich PD just had to protect people from local crimes, but computers and technology can make residents vulnerable to worldwide criminal activity,” he said.