UPS saves Kansas woman from losing over $60K to scam
GREAT BEND, Kan. (KSNW) -– Employees at a Great Bend UPS store helped save a Rush County woman from losing over $60,000 to a scammer.
UPS Package Handler and Driver Eli Saffa says it was a normal day at work when he noticed something off with what the customer was saying about the package they were attempting to mail. When he took it for a second inspection at their shipping center he says the entire room was taken aback by the discovery.
When Saffa’s bosses opened up the package, they were blown away. Inside, they found nothing but $44,900.
“Just complete astonishment, we see small amounts, you know, $5,000, $10,000 when it was that large amount, we’re looking at lots and lots of cash, it was just complete astonishment,” said Saffa.
The Great Bend Police Department began investigating and learned the package was to be delivered to a business in California. Using a photo of the woman from the store’s surveillance system, detectives began checking with local banks to see if the woman had made any recent large withdrawals.
They were able to identify the woman in her 70s. Police say she had been prepared to send the scammer an additional $20,000, but her son intervened and stopped her before she sent it.
Police say it began with a scammer calling while using a spoofer to make it appear they were calling from a Washington, D.C. number. The scammer claimed to be from the Department of Commerce, accusing the woman of being involved in a financial scheme.
She was told she had to pay $44,900 to avoid trouble. She later received a second call saying she needed to pay an additional $20,000.
Saffa says he saw the red flags.
“The packaging itself, where it was going, the delivery method that she was requesting, there’s a lot of things,” said Saffa.
Police say the bank notified her son when she attempted to make the second withdrawal. The scammers had instructed the woman to say she was purchasing a car when making the original withdrawal if the bank asked any questions.
Saffa says this has happened more than once.
“We’re looking at three times in our little community in three months, the total is exceeding $60,000 over those three times, and so you get into the bigger cities, and you know it happens constantly,” he said.
Happy to have helped, Saffa says he was just doing the right thing.
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“Us intercepting it, I’m just thankful that we were here, we were here for her, we were able to save her the headache of what would’ve come if it had gone through,” he said.
In this case, the scam was denied, and the woman’s money was saved but police say it can be near impossible to locate the funds after it has been collected by the scammer.
Scammers often use urgency and the threat of legal consequences to convince people to comply. They can sometimes be elaborate with spoofed phone numbers that appear official and more than one person participating in the scam against the victim.
No government agency will contact you by telephone and demand you pay them in cash, gift cards, cryptocurrency, or through wire transfers like Western Union. If you receive a call claiming you need to pay money or you will be arrested or similarly threatened, hang up and call your local law enforcement agency.
For information and tips from the FBI on how to avoid scams and how to report them, click here.
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