BRUNSWICK — A few stores tried to convince Dianne Benedict that she was the victim of a phone scam, but she didn’t believe them. The man who had been on the phone with her for the past five hours was desperate, she said, and was at risk of losing his job if she didn’t get him the $5,400 he needed.
At Target, the manager told her they couldn’t help her, but at WalMart, she was able to get a $500 gift card and at Shaw’s she was able to get another $500 worth of Google Play gift cards. It was ultimately a UPS policy that stopped her from shipping the remaining $4,400 in cash to the New York City address the stranger had given her.
“I thought I was doing him a favor,” Benedict, a Brunswick resident, said Wednesday. “He preyed on my sympathies and guilt.”
Benedict, 76, is just one of millions who fall victim to scams each year. The Senate Special Committee on Aging estimates that seniors lose an estimated $2.9 billion annually to financial exploitation. In 2018, 489 Mainers called the committee’s hotline to report scams — more than any other state. According to the Federal Trade Commission, people over the age of 70 lose far more money to phone scams than younger cohorts — the median loss for adults in their 70s was $751, compared to $400 for people in their 20s.
“We get a few calls a week about this,” Brunswick Police Cmdr. Mark Waltz said. “A lot of times the perpetrators are actually overseas or in Africa, so the long arm of the law can’t reach them,” he added, calling the situation “frustrating.”
The Senate committee on aging reported that the top scams in 2018 included people posing as the IRS, robocalls, sweepstakes or Jamaican lottery scams, computer tech support scams, people posing as grandchildren needing help and romance scams.
The romance scams are generally conducted online rather than over the phone, Waltz said, and people will believe they found their soulmate online, who just needs some money for a little bit of trouble or to come for a visit.
The grandparent scam is another police see often. In this scam, someone will pose as the person’s grandchild and say they have been arrested — often while traveling in a foreign country — and need bail money. They ask the grandparents to wire money and not to tell their parents.
Now that there is more education around wiring money, Waltz said people are more likely to ask for money through gift cards, as happened in Benedict’s case. This is a clear warning sign of a scam. Waltz said a scammer once requested that bail be paid in GameStop gift cards.
“No police department is going to ask for gift cards” for bail money, Waltz said.
Benedict lost $1,000 buying the gift cards, but was closer to losing so much more.
“It’s affected me,” she said. “I’m having trouble sleeping. I’m having nightmares.”
Benedict had heard of some of these scams in the past, but wanted to share her story to alert others to the dangers of phone scams, especially because they are constantly evolving.
“Maine is the oldest state in the nation,” Sen. Susan Collins said in a statement to The Times Record, “and as Chairman of the Senate Aging Committee, helping to protect seniors from predators seeking to rob them of their hard-earned savings is a high priority. … I have also authored legislation to prevent fraud, including the Senior$afe Act, a new law that will help financial service representatives protect seniors from exploitation, and the Seniors Fraud Prevention Act, which would enhance fraud monitoring, increase consumer education, and strengthen the complaint tracking system. In addition, I recently cosponsored legislation to crack down on illegal robocalls, which are used to perpetrate many of these crimes. Putting a stop to senior scams requires a coordinated approach, and I will continue to work with my colleagues and law enforcement to prevent seniors from becoming victims.”
Origins of a scam
Early Friday morning, before she had even had her coffee, Benedict received a call she thought was the company that had done some technical support work for her a few years ago. They were going out of business, the caller said, and wanted to issue her a $600 refund. They told her to sign into her online banking account and watch for a transfer from Chase Bank. She was told to write in the “600” to confirm. But then, the caller said she had approved a transfer for $6,000 instead of the $600 and that he was going to lose his job over the mistake.
He “started getting hysterical, and was saying ‘oh my god, my poor family,’” she said. “I felt terrible.”
This is what scammers call “putting you under the ether,” according to Jane Margesson, communications director for AARP Maine. “It’s designed to induce an emotional response … these people will stop at nothing to separate people from their hard earned money; it’s the most despicable thing you can imagine,” she said, adding that, unfortunately, as long as it keeps working, it will keep happening.
The scammer stayed on the phone and had her drive to five different stores to get the gift cards and then to her bank to withdraw cash. She was on the phone with the scammer for eight hours. She didn’t eat, drink or go to the bathroom in that time. In last two hours, when she started resisting, she said, he became angry and threatened to drain her bank account.
“I don’t understand how I could have complied for so long,” she said. When UPS refused to send the money, she and the scammer agreed that they would try again the next day.
That night though, Benedict told the story to her friends, who convinced her it had been a scam. She went to the police, but by that point there was nothing they could do. The store managers who sold her the gift cards said the same thing. She reported the scam to the FTC Complaint Assistant.
He called her back twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday and then one more time on Monday. She hasn’t listened to the messages, she said.
“If it happened to her, it’s happening elsewhere,” Margesson said. “The elderly are often targeted because they may have a nest egg or are vulnerable” after something like the loss of a spouse.
“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” Waltz said. “Have a trusted friend or a family member to talk to first before” a big financial decision, he said. Plus, the police are always willing to be a resource for anyone who might have questions, he added.
Part of the way to break the cycle is to talk about it, Margesson said. “Arm yourself with information. If you can recognize it … you can take back control.”
“It can happen to any of us,” she added.
For more information on how to avoid fraud, visit the FTC’s website.
If you suspect you or a loved one have been the victim of a scam, call the AARP free helpline at 1-877-908-3360 or visit the AARP’s Fraud Watch Network.
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