Wise move saves man from scam

November 8, 2022

By Sheriff Dave Kramer

An elderly gentleman stopped by the Boundary County Sheriff’s Office today after he had almost been the victim of a telephone scam. The caller had indicated that he was a public defender from back east representing his grandson, who had been arrested. The caller said that he needed $20,000 immediately to help keep his grandson out of trouble.

The caller was very convincing and had information about his grandson (which often times is readily available on the internet). The gentleman was in the process of getting the money from his account when he decided that he should stop by and talk to us first.

This is typical of a scam that has been used for many years to get your hard-earned money. The story may change, but a couple things that usually remain the same; they have some information to make you believe what they are saying and they always insist that it needs to be done right away.

With the holiday season coming up there will be more scam attempts either by phone or email.

We encourage that if you get a request to send money or money orders to someone that you do not know, even if they sound convincing, do not do it. Talk to your bank and/or law enforcement first to help you find out if it is legitimate.

Unfortunately, many victims, often elderly, do not report these crimes because of embarrassment after losing their money. If you have elderly family members, please talk to them about fraud and how not to be a victim. Talk to your bank and have them help keep you informed of scams.

In this case the criminal contacted the wrong person and they recognized it as a scam before they were separated from a large sum of money.

The FBI has a fraud website www.IC3.gov, which is the Internet Crime complaint center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. There are also resources with the Idaho Attorney Generals Office consumer protection division.

Many times the criminals involved in these scams are not even from the United States and the best way to stop them is by not giving out any personal information over the phone or internet and refusing to provide funds to demands or requests that you are not familiar with.