It’s your grandson. He’s on the phone, frantic and in trouble. He needs money right now.
You love him and want to help. And you’re really rattled. He’s your grandson — isn’t he?
Everett’s Al Furiak, 74, lost $2,000 last week. He was bilked by a cagey caller pretending to be his grandson in a scheme the state Attorney General’s Office calls the “grandparent scam.”
“They made it so lifelike,” Furiak said Wednesday. “When it’s your grandson, your emotions take over.”
It wasn’t Furiak’s grandson calling the morning of Oct. 17, although the caller was plenty convincing with a story of police trouble. The call escalated into the man crying on the phone, and another voice — purportedly a police official — explaining that $2,000 was needed immediately.
Furiak does have an 18-year-old grandson, a University of Washington student living in a dorm on the Seattle campus.
“I didn’t exactly recognize my grandson’s voice, but he was talking to me and started crying,” Furiak said. “He said he went to breakfast with a friend. And the guy got stopped, a traffic stop. Police opened the trunk and found cocaine, two kilos, and an unregistered gun. My grandson was slobbering like crazy. Then he gets me to the captain — whether he said it, he made me believe it was the Seattle police.”
That caller told Furiak his grandson had to go to a hearing. “He is telling me how serious this is, how my grandson has to go through a whole process. And I was telling him, ‘For crying out loud, this kid is innocent,’” said Furiak, who is retired from the Teamsters Union.
The bogus “captain” told Furiak to get $2,000 in cash and buy four $500 Reloadit cards. The caller even gave Furiak a location near his home, a Safeway store on Rucker Avenue, that offers the prepaid cards. Furiak was told to call back and provide numbers on the back of the Reloadit cards — giving the scammers immediate access to the $2,000. He was assured that after the hearing he would get his money back.
Distraught, Furiak acted quickly before figuring out he was being swindled. He is now a bit embarrassed that he fell for it but is telling his story to warn others. He is far from alone in his misfortune.
“This kind of scam is very, very common,” said Aaron Snell, an Everett Police Department spokesman. Scammers pretend to be grandchildren, police, the Internal Revenue Service, “all sorts of people who call and demand money,” Snell said.
Victims tend to be older, and callers “bully them almost,” Snell said. “Some of the IRS scams say police are on the way to arrest you now if you don’t give us the money.”
Crooks often ask for prepaid Reloadit or Green Dot cards. And they likely use no-contract TracFones which are hard to trace and can be dumped, Snell said.
After rushing to his bank and the Safeway store, and calling the scammer back with card numbers, Furiak finally called his grandson. “I tried his cell — no answer. He was probably in class,” he said.
A longtime member of the Snohomish County Football Officials Association, Furiak had a Snohomish High School game to referee that night. He got home after 10 p.m. and again called his grandson. The UW student answered but had no idea about what had happened to his grandfather. “That’s when I found out I’d been had,” Furiak said.
He immediately called police, and an officer came to his home to take a report. Furiak now knows his money is gone for good.
At the state Attorney General’s Office, acting communications director Alison Dempsey-Hall pointed out consumer alerts about the grandparent scam dating back to 2008.
Among red flags listed on the agency’s website: being asked to send money quickly and secretly, and a caller who can’t or won’t answer questions only the real person would know.
Sgt. Pete Noetzel, of the Everett Police Department’s financial crimes unit, said the stories used by scammers have evolved. Some advance-pay schemes say the person has an IRS bill due or didn’t show up for jury duty. “Most citizens are honest and want to get it taken care of. They have a fine, and they’re going to pay it right away,” Noetzel said.
Quick-money scams are often perpetrated from overseas, Noetzel said. He noted that callers using magicJack-type technology can be in other countries yet have 425 phone numbers.
“Even when the money is followed, it’s not in the United States. All our leads lead nowhere,” said Noetzel, adding that local police meet regularly with FBI and other federal officials to share information about financial crimes.
While emergencies do happen, Snell said, no police agency will demand money over the phone. “That should be your first red flag, someone calling with an emotional story demanding money right away,” he said.
It was emotion that got to Furiak. In hindsight, he had an inkling something wasn’t right.
“My grandson is so level-headed. He would not be around somebody he thought was crooked,” Furiak said. “If you weren’t so emotionally involved, you would have known.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Don’t get scammed
The state Attorney General’s office offers tips for avoiding the “grandparent scam” at www.atg.wa.gov/BlogPost.aspx?id=20398#.VElCFbS2Xcs.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
