A Westlock resident says she was targeted by the “grandparent” scam recently, wherein a con artist phones up a senior citizen pretending to be one of their grandchildren and in need of money.
Stella Weber said she received a call on Wednesday from a man purporting to be her grandson.
As she doesn’t currently have any grandchildren, Weber said she challenged the caller and he immediately ended the call. “I said, ‘Oh really? Which one are you?’ And then he hung up on me,” she said.
The “emergency scam,” also known as the grandparent scam, has been around for years, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
In the typical scenario, a grandparent receives a call from a caller claiming to one of their grandchildren. The caller says they are in trouble — typically a car accident, though sometimes they have trouble returning from a foreign country or need to be bailed out of jail.
The caller begs their grandparent to assist them with money, but not to tell anyone else about the incident. Wanting to help, the victim sends funds via a money transfer company like Money Gram or Western Union.
Weber said she contacted the Westlock News to let people know this scam was making the rounds in the area again.
Did you get a call about free Air Miles points or some other unlikely give-away from what appeared to be a local number? You’ve been the target of what is commonly known as “spoofing.”
Aside from the grandparent scam, Weber said she has also gotten a couple of irate calls recently from Westlock residents about her phoning their house, even though she never did.
“People have called me and said, ‘Hey, you called my house,’ and I didn’t,” she said.
According to the June 17 edition of the Town & Country, marketing companies have created software that allows them to mask caller display numbers in such a way that the calls appear to be local.
Telemarketers have also found ways of imitating local numbers currently in use, which leads to angry exchanges between residents fed up with telemarketing calls.
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says that the offers being made aren’t necessary illegal, but residents should nonetheless exercise extreme caution about such offers, as legitimate companies have little reason to obscure their identity.
