My friend and her 70 year old Mother were caught up in this scam. You can read the first part of the story here.

What Scam? What Fraud?

To catch you up….  My friend’s mother unknowingly had her email hacked and the personal information from those emails was used to perpetrate one whammy of a scam on that friend and her mother… I’ll let her pick up the story from here:

Diane, the scammers sorted through info in Mom’s hacked emails and got all sorts of tidbits they could use. They could tell that my Mother and my college roommate were good friends who stayed in regular contact. They found out that my college roommate lived in New Jersey, that she had a husband, and two girls in high school. By using this and other personal info, a woman CALLED my Mom and convincingly pretended to be my old roommate Sarah.

This “fake-Sarah” was sobbing. She told my mother that she had been at a friend’s bachelorette party in Toronto Canada, had gotten drunk, was pulled over by police for a DUI and was too embarrassed and freaked out to call her husband to bail her out.

Because my Mother and Sarah were such good friends and my Mother knew that I, as her daughter, would care deeply if my BFF were stranded in jail, my Mother agreed to send Sarah $1500 so that she could post bail and get back to New Jersey.

Keep in mind, this wasn’t just an email scam. My Mother received a FRANTIC PHONE CALL and truly thought she had TALKED on the phone to Sarah!

Mom later told me that while the woman was crying, very distraught and somewhat incoherent, she was ABSOLUTELY convinced that it was the REAL-Sarah on the phone. I mean if you were in jail in Canada, who wouldn’t sound distraught right?

My Mother made arrangements to get the $1500 and found a Western Union where she could wire the money immediately.

I just happened to call Mom as she was in the middle of all this and she reluctantly told me what was going on.

I immediately smelled a scam!

I promptly called the number my Mom had been given to see for myself what was really going on and bust this thing wide open! While I never talked to fake-Sarah, because “she only got one phone call,” I did talk to “the lawyer” who had been appointed to her case. Yep, you see where this is going – it would turn out to be a fake-lawyer!

It gets worse! Read the end of the story… Click Here

Diane M. Brown, Esq.
Working every day to keep my clients out of court!
It’s your money… Let’s keep it that way!
Call 408-364-1234

This blog contains general information and is not meant to apply to a specific situation. Please seek advice of counsel before proceeding as each case is unique.