MORGANTOWN — On Monday, Monongalia County resident Sandra Wolfe and her husband received a call from a male claiming to be her son, telling her he had been hurt in an accident.
There was a lot of static and background noise on the line, making it hard for Wolfe to tell if the voice really was her son. Wolfe said it did sound like it could be an accident scene, and her husband spent about a minute trying to get more information before the caller hung up.
Immediately after the call ended, the worried couple called their son’s cell phone and he was unable to answer. Wolfe said her son travels for work which, combined with the background noises, helped sell the story.
About 10 minutes later, their son called back. He was fine. There was no accident.
It was a scam.
Wolfe said the scammer never asked for money. She thinks that’s because the call took too much time due to her husband’s bad hearing and repeated questions.
She reported the scam attempt to the West Virginia State Police and was told by a dispatcher there had been several similar reports recently. She then shared her story with The Dominion Post so “other innocent people will not be caught off guard.”
“It’s cruel. It’s absolutely cruel to put someone through this kind of stress,” Wolfe said. “I just think people need to be warned because that was a lot of stress and if I’d had half an idea these kind of things were happening I might not have reacted so dramatically.”
The retired couple both have heart conditions and consider themselves lucky the stress didn’t cause a medical issue.
First Sgt. Geoffrey S. Petsko, who leads the West Virginia State Police in Monongalia, Preston and Taylor counties, said the accident scam is a common one.
“There’s so many anymore,” Petsko said. “And what’s unfortunate is that the people of more advanced age and maybe who aren’t real technologically advanced tend to believe what they hear on the phones and emails and in texts and other things that they get.”
He’s worked cases where victims have lost as much as $500,000 to phone scams. The money is often sent overseas and can be reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but there is only so much they can do if it’s sent to foreign countries.
The various scams all want money in one of just a few ways – wire transfers, such as MoneyGram or Western union, or prepaid credit cards.
“I can’t say anything clearer than when the money is wired it’s gone. There’s no getting it back,” Petsko said. The same goes once the number off a prepaid credit card is given away.
So, how do you avoid falling victim to a scam?
First and foremost, people need to talk about it. Petsko said for every one person who reports falling victim to a phone scam, there are 10 who don’t, because they’re embarrassed.
Petsko said the crime is very frustrating and very near and dear to his heart – he has very close friends who have been victimized.
“We get a call saying we won a lottery in Ghana, we’re gonna hang up,” Petsko said of those who are aware. But for a 70-year-old on a fixed income without the knowledge of these types of scams, they see a changed life for a processing fee of only $50. The next fee is higher, and before you know it, they’re borrowing money and several thousands of dollars that they have no hope of repaying are gone.
The friends and family of older people who might fall victim to these types of scams need to reach out and have repeated talks about how to protect yourself, Petsko said. And victims shouldn’t feel embarrassed about falling for it.
“It’s preventable,” he said. “Really they should be telling everyone on social media and friends and definitely older family members what happened.”
The other piece of advice Petsko offered is to follow up on whatever is being presented. If you get a call saying your grandchild was arrested, hang up, call some police agencies or the regional jail and verify the legitimacy of the call.
“It’s disgusting,” Petsko said. “It’s absolutely disgusting how much money is lost in this country to scams.”
