Athens teenager and senior lose thousands of dollars in telephone scams
Two residents of Athens fell for financial scams perpetrated over the telephone recently.
A teenager lost $3,500 and a senior woman lost $20,000, according to the Athens-Clarke police reports that were released Tuesday.
“I lost my complete savings,” the woman told the Athens Banner-Herald on Wednesday. “I fell for it — hook, line and sinker — and there’s no way to get it back.”
The woman’s scam was reported April 7, when she told an officer she received a call from a man claiming to be from the headquarters of Vystar Credit Union.
“He was calling me at all hours of the night and day and guiding me to what I needed to do to protect my money,” she said.
The man instructed her to withdraw her savings of $20,000, so she and her husband drove to the credit union office and withdrew the $20,000 cash, she said. Then she was instructed to drive to a gas station where she placed the cash in a bitcoin machine.
“He needed to have a picture of the receipt and once I did that, it was gone,” she said.
“You’d think that when you’re 69 years old you could figure it out, but this is the first time I’ve ever had anything happen like this,” she said about the man, she now described as "silver tongued."
Also, on April 5, an 18-year-old Athens resident reported to police that on the previous day he received a telephone call from a man who identified himself as a Wells Fargo official who said someone was using his Social Security number in a fraudulent way, but the FBI would contact him with a way to "fix the scam."
A few hours later, a man identified as an FBI agent texted him telling him to purchase $3,500 in gift cards and send him pictures of the front and back of the cards.
After this, the teen told the officer the caller blocked his number.
He asked the officer if there was anything that could be done. He was given a case report number.
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This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Athens crime: Teen and woman both scammed over the telephone
