Athens man was on a scammer's leash until an Oconee County Walmart employee intervened
A 64-year-old Athens man said Friday he recently found himself caught in an elaborate telephone scam and was providing money to the scammers until an alert Walmart employee interceded.
“I fell for it. They knew too much about me and it really got me. Honestly, I was very scared,” the man recalled about the incident he reported to Athens-Clarke police on March 2.
The callers knew he had a home in Alabama, but worked and rented a home in Athens. They also knew what vehicle he drove and its tag number. And he was being threatened with immediate arrest if he didn’t pay $5,000 for failing to appear for grand jury duty in Alabama
“Every year I get called for jury duty in Alabama,” he said as his home is in a county with about 10,000 residents.
The two scammers identified themselves as officers working for Sheriff Jeff Shaver.
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“I know Sheriff Shaver. I’ve been fishing with him,” the man said. “I frantically tried to call him on my second phone.”
However, he got a recording that the call was unable to connect.
“The whole time he’s talking to me he says if I hang up that I definitely will go to jail,” he said.
He was directed to Walmart to purchase debit cards. At the Walmart in Athens, he was able to send $2,000, but then his debit card locked up so the scammer told him to head to the next nearest Walmart.
This took him to the Walmart in Oconee County.
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He scanned a card and the scammer told him it went through, which makes him suspect now they had somehow acquired codes on the cards in store racks. But he began having problems with one card, which caught the eye of an employee working at the self-checkout station.
The man said the employee approached him and as they talked, he could hear the scammer say “get away from him.”
“The Walmart guy couldn’t be but 18 or 19 years old. I handed him my phone and he talked to the guy and the (scammer) told him he didn’t need to get involved," said the victim. “The Walmart guy handed the phone back and he took the cards out of my hand and said, ‘This is over. I’m not selling you these.'”
That employee, the man said, stopped the scam saved him money “big time.” He lost less than half of what the scammers were trying to get.
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A similar scam occurred five days earlier in Athens, when a 64-year-old woman reported she responded to a pop-up on her computer, which told her to call a certain number for Microsoft. She did and spoke to a person who identified himself as a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent.
She was told to withdraw $1,500 from her bank and purchase gift cards.
The woman told an Athens-Clarke officer she went to Walmart to purchase cards, but “they wouldn’t give her the cards.” The report did not explain why.
The woman said she went to another retail store and purchased the cards, then provided the activation numbers to the scammers.
The report did not explain why, but she then reported the matter to police.
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Scam against Athens man unravels while buying gift cards at Walmart
