October 10, 2008 09:47 pm
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By Greg Grisolano
ggrisolano@joplinglobe.com
CARTHAGE, Mo. — Delpha Speak got what could have been the most expensive phone call of her life on Thursday morning.
Speak, a 72-year-old retiree living in Carthage, thought her grandson-in-law was in some trouble.
“He said, ‘Grandma,’ and I said, ‘Which grandson?’” said Speak, who has 13 grandchildren. “He said, ‘Guess,’ and I said, ‘Oh, it’s Jamie,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, it’s Jamie.’”
Speak said her grandson-in-law lives in Kansas City, and frequently travels for business reasons, so she didn’t think it implausible that the caller said he was in Niagra Falls, Ontario, Canada.
“He said, ‘Grandma, I’m really in trouble,’” she said. “He said, ‘I’ve had a car wreck and I have to have $5,000 to get out of the police station.’”
Speak said the caller urged her to wire the money via MoneyGram at Wal-Mart, and begged her not to call her granddaughter.
“By now he was crying almost,” she said. “He said, ‘Don’t tell anyone, because I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here.’”
Speak said after she hung up, her husband, Bill, headed to the bank to the get the money. While he was gone, she decided to call the police station and find out what was going on.
“As soon as I said do you have Jamie, my grandson, there, they said, ‘Ma’am it’s a scam,’” she said. “They’re calling people from out of the country, and it’s always grandparents.”
While not a commonly occurring scam in Missouri, a spokesman for Attorney General Jay Nixon said the scammer’s line is a familiar one.
“That’s the classic grandparents’ scam,” said Travis Ford, consumer educator for Nixon’s office. “The scammer doesn’t know the granchild’s name, so they call and say grandma and hope the grandparent gives them the name of the person they’re impersonating.”
Ford said his office has one other documented case of the scam, which nearly bilked $8,000 out of a central Missouri man earlier this year.
“Our advice is for grandparents to stop and collect their thoughts for a minute, and then do whatever they can to verify the location of their grandchildren,” he said.
Speak said she was able to get in touch with her daughter later Thursday, and that she confirmed her grandson-in-law was, in fact, at home in Kansas City.
Speak said she never thought she could be a victim of a phone scam.
“I felt so dumb,” she said. “I just never thought it would happen to us.
“When they hit you with your grandchildren, you’re going to help them,” she said. “We’d do that for any of them.”
Ford said scammers routinely target the elderly, who are often vulnerable to lottery or “phishing scams” that seek to gather personal information.
“Lottery is the big one that preys on the elderly,” he said, and he urged anybody who believes they may have been a victim of a scam to contact local law enforcement. “It doesn’t matter where the scammer is. If the consumer is in Missouri, they can call local police and they can call us.”
Ford said he believes the current economic downturn may make scams more prevalent.
“People are going to be more desperate for money, and more vulnerable to these scams,” he said. “We want consumers to know that scammers out there may be trying to take advantage of that concern.”
Consumer-complaints hot line
Travis Ford, a spokesman for Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, said any person who may have been a victim of a telephone or e-mail scam should contact local law enforcement, and the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, Consumer Complaints Division. The consumer-protection hot line can be reached toll-free at 1-800-392-8222, or online at www.ago.mo.gov.
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