By Mike Bodine
Register Staff
1-31-2009

Imagine receiving a phone call from a beloved, out-of-state relative who claims to be in need of financial assistance.
You haven’t heard from this relative in a while, and though you might be a bit apprehensive, they are family, and you’ll do anything for family.
Then imagine finding out the caller was actually an imposter, and the money you thought you were sending to your loved one is now in the hands of a clever con artist.
This may sound far-fetched, but it recently happened to a Big Pine resident, who said he was scammed out of more than $2,000 by an individual posing as his grandson.
What’s more, the scam, known as the “Grandparents Scam” is actually more common than one might think.
The Inyo County Sheriff’s Department said this week they are looking into the Big Pine resident’s case and could not discuss details about an ongoing investigation, but said this Grandparents Scam is not a new one.

The Big Pine resident, who has requested to remain anonymous, will be referred to in this story as, “Kelly.”
Kelly said Tuesday that he received a phone call on Jan. 22,  from a man claiming to be his grandson. The man said that the Canadian government was holding his passport, car and cell phone until the grandson could pay for damages to a rental vehicle.
Kelly said he asked the man several details about the grandson’s personal life, such as where he was going to school and what position he played on the college football team. The impostor knew the details and even had knowledge that the grandson’s parents were deceased.
Kelly said the man sounded and acted like his grandson, but Kelly added, he has seen his grandson just a couple times a year since he began attending college.
“He convinced my wife and I both that he was our grandson,” Kelly said.
Kelly said she sent the $2,200 to Toronto, Ontario just as the alleged grandson asked.
Kelly didn’t hear anything more about it until he called his grandson three days later to find out he had been the victim of a phone scam.
Kelly is certain that the man posing as his grandson gained personal information about both himself and his grandson from popular Web sites such as YouTube, peoplefinder.com and pipl.com.
Kelly said his grandson was able to access information about himself and his family through searching the Internet. In fact, an Internet search of “find people web sites” yields more than 130 million matches. Many of these are for Web sites offering services to find the phone numbers and addresses of nearly anyone in the world.
Inyo Sheriff’s said that some scammers will take a lead from what a possible victim says over the phone and run with that.
For example, a scammer calls and says “Hi, gramma do you know who this is?”
Gramma answers, “John, my grandson?”
“Yes, this is John,” says the scammer, and now knows the grandson’s name.
Sheriff’s also said that there are reports of the Grandparents Scam from around the country. One such report is of a call claiming that a grandson needs cash because of a fishing violation in Canada. The scam continued with calls from people posing as fish and game personnel explaining that the grandson’s fines are increasing each day the fee is not met.
Phone scammers have a wealth of information at their fingertips by way of the Internet. Kelly said that the impostor must have also known that Western Union is the only money transfer service available in the Bishop area, as that is how the impostor wanted the money sent.

Western Union told Kelly they could not release information as to where exactly the money was picked up, other than the fact that it was out of the U.S.  According to Kelly, all the impostor needed to pick up the money was to present a photo ID at any of the  Western Union branches in Toronto.
Kelly believes Western Union is at fault because they delivered the money to someone who obviously provided a false ID.
Dave Liggett, Western Union’s consumer public relations manager for the U.S., stated in an email Wednesday, “If an agent is presented with a fake ID, they cannot always determine if the ID is real or fake. It is likely the sender provided the recipient with the transaction number when used to send the money – that would also make the recipient look legitimate at the payout agent’s location.”
Liggett also stated, “we go to great efforts to warn senders not to send money to someone they do not know. This is printed on the top of our ‘To Send Money’ forms when visiting one of our agents.”
Liggett concluded by adding that Western Union has a group that watches for potential scams and frauds and “I personally feel bad that there are victims that do get taken by scam artists, who are very good at what they do.”
To keep the public safe from these particular scams, Inyo Sheriff’s are suggesting people ask more detailed personal information about someone calling, posing as a loved one and wanting cash.
Sheriff’s suggest calling the actual relative, or another close relative, to determine if their loved one is indeed in trouble. Another suggestion is to ask the grandchild-impersonator false personal information to see if the caller agrees, such as, “How’s your sister?” when the grandchild has no siblings.
Thus far, Big Pine is the only place authorities believe the scam has been perpetrated locally.
Police in Marlborough, N.H. are warning residents of an identical scam in that area in which, “callers contact grandparents via telephone, pretend to be their grandchild and con them out of money.”
Marlborough Police say, “the thieves made (the victims) believe that they were in fact talking to their grandchild.”
According to Toronto Sun’s award-winning investigative reporters on the subject, Christian Cotroneo and Robert Cribb, Canada is a “hot bed” of telemarketing and phone scams. Preying on the poor, elderly and empathy of Americans, these phone scam artists offer bargains like no-interest credit cards for just a $199 sign-up fee, and other too-good-to-be-true deals.
Canadian phone-scam artists have some protection from prosecution because of international borders. These “telemarketing boiler rooms” can be put up and torn down in a matter of minutes, “with the only furniture, a telephone.”