The digital age has brought with it an increase in scams because it is so easy to connect and talk to strangers, be that online or over the phone. This disconnection from face-to-face encounters leaves people vulnerable and more susceptible than ever before to scammers. These despicable individuals set up phony traps to lead people to hand over their hard-earned money without even realizing they are being fooled until it’s too late.
Sadly, loving grandfather Cecil Rodgers was so nearly another victim.
A lot of scammers choose elderly people as their targets, not only because in general, they’re more trusting and less savvy, but because they can sometimes be out of touch with the sorts of things that younger people can usually spot from a mile away.
He received a phone call from a man pretending to be his grandson. He told him that he’d been involved in a terrible car crash and needed some financial help. His ‘attorney’ then got on the phone and demanded Cecil send money
Cecil is an elderly man from Cincinnati, Ohio who was looking forward to spending time with his family over the holidays. They were all going to visit him, including his adult grandchildren, at his Elmwood Place home. He was happily daydreaming about this when it happened.
Cecil received a phone call from a man pretending to be his grandson. His fake grandson told him that he’d been involved in a terrible car crash and needed some financial help. He then passed the phone abruptly to his ‘attorney’. When the ‘attorney’ got on the phone he demanded Cecil send money.
“A voice comes on and says, ‘Papaw, this is your oldest grandson. I’m in trouble,’” Rodgers recalled.
“He said, ‘I hit a woman’s car and she was seven months pregnant. And they charged me with drunken driving and I’m in jail.”
To help his grandson, Cecil was told he should go to Walmart and transfer $2,300 of his own money to another store. The lawyer said he would pick up the money and use it to post the grandson’s bail in order to get him out.
He hurried to his bank, and then to his local Walmart to send the money without delay.
He was so worried about his grandson that he didn’t even hesitate to question the phone call. All he could think about was sending that cash.
Once in Walmart, Cecil got into Audrella Taylor’s line. When he came face to face with Audrella, he thought that she would just do her job.
The last thing Cecil expected was to deal with a cashier who stubborn stood in his way and declined the transaction.
Audrella asked exactly why he was sending that amount of money.
Cecil Rodgers told her the truth and opened up to Audrella about his grandson’s emergency. The cashier realized instantly that something was not right.
Audrella explains, “He said something about somebody was locked up in jail. He got a call, and he needed to send $2,300. I said, ‘I am going to refuse the sender. I’m not going to let you send that money. I think you are being scammed.’”
Audrella went on to ask if any of Cecil’s other family members had been contacted by either the grandson or his ‘lawyer’.
She grew increasingly alarmed when Cecil admitted that they hadn’t.
That was all the confirmation she needed to be sure something was wrong because she knew that in the event of a bad accident the first person who should have been approached was the grandson’s mother, not the grandfather.
Still, Cecil couldn’t fathom why someone would try to take his money in that way. The idea was absurd! He surely hadn’t even considered the idea that it wasn’t his grandson on the phone. He was starting to get very anxious about all her questions and, still believed he was doing right by his grandson, didn’t want to delay. On top of it all, the lawyer on the line had advised him not to tell anyone about the phone call, suggesting that if he did his grandson might end up in even more trouble, and he had told this pestering woman!
Finally, Audrella managed to convince him not to send the money yet. She got him to calm down, then call his other family members. She was confident that he would find out his grandson was perfectly ok, and sure enough, she was right. Cecil’s grandson was safe at college.
In the end, the voice on the phone wasn’t Cecil’s grandson at all. And, of course, the second person who took the line wasn’t a lawyer, either. They were low-life scammers who had perfected their craft of preying on the elderly in what’s become known as the “grandparent scam.”
It’s a good thing Cecil listened to Audrella because there would have been no way for him to get his money back had he sent it. Audrella’s manager has said he is very proud of her for going above and beyond, whilst Cecil’s family is grateful for her intervention. Now, Wal-Mart is training all their employees to pick up on signs of fraud, says the manager.
Watch it here: Youtube/WCPO 9
Sources: Taphaps, Viralnovelty, Opposingviews