A Nanaimo grandmother is speaking out after she was the victim of a scam that cost her thousands of dollars.
“They’re just criminals. They’re criminals with absolutely no concept of what they do to people’s lives,” says the 80-year-old, who requested CHEK not to disclose her identity.
According to the woman, it all started with a phone call earlier this month, where someone posing as her beloved grandson, told her in a panic that he’d been in an accident and was arrested and needed bail money.
She said the caller sounded exactly like her grandson and had told her not to tell his mom.
“My grandson was going to be in horrific trouble,” the woman recalled.
Then the caller put the phone over to a now she knows, phony RCMP officer, who directed her to take out cash and send it by courier immediately.
“[It was] a well-spoken type of person maybe 60 years old,” she said. “They had an answer for absolutely everything.”
Unfortunately for her, it turns out the caller was not her grandson and the voice claiming to be the police was merely just a voice and not an actual RCMP officer.
“I said ‘didn’t you have a car accident last weekend?’ and he said ‘no are you okay?'” she said. “He said ‘hangup I am going to call my mom.'”
By then, she had lost $14,000 before she realized that what was happening to her and that her grandson wasn’t even in jail, according to the Nanaimo RCMP.
“They’re unscrupulous. They don’t care if they bleed them dry, they’ll take their last penny,” said Nanaimo RCMP Const. Gary O’Brien.
O’Brien said the information scammers use to convince the targets that they’re really talking to a loved one are often found online, where details can be obtained easily on social media by criminals.
“So much information is available,” said O’Brien. “You can go to Facebook, you can go to LinkedIn, you go to Snapchat, any information they use and they exploit it.”
The grandmother at the centre of this story says she thought she would never fall for a scam like this until she did. She is now urging seniors to ask a question only your loved one would know, do not send them money, and tell someone, about the calls.
Meanwhile, the Nanaimo RCMP are continuing their investigation into the matter.
Skye Ryan
