“Hide and safeguard it,” the man told her. A key, he said, would arrive soon – if she paid taxes on her winnings.
The
woman would soon fork out $43,500 in a quest for that key and would end
up exposing a nationwide scheme to scam the elderly using safes as
props, court records reveal.
Charges piling up
The scheme
is detailed in records filed in both Knox County’s criminal courts and
in U.S. District Court in Knoxville after the arrest of one alleged
co-conspirator in the scam – Betty Lou Repka Myers, 76, of Canyon Lake,
Texas.
Myers, represented by defense attorney
Cullen Wojcik, is set to appear next week in U.S. District Court before
U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Poplin to decide if she must be locked up
pending trial in an indictment issued earlier this month by a federal
grand jury.
She is charged in that case, which is being prosecuted
by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kolman, with conspiracy to commit
mail fraud and mail fraud. Myers faces charges in Knox County of felony
theft and financial exploitation of the elderly.
Myers
also holds the key to law enforcement’s quest to unmask the identities
of at least two other people involved in the scam as court records make
clear she was working with at least two others in her alleged defrauding
of the Knox County woman.
USA TODAY
NETWORK-Tennessee is not identifying the victim. The elderly often are
reluctant to report their victimization in financial scams for fear of
public embarrassment. Kolman used only the woman’s initials as
identification in the indictment for that reason.
A safe and a key
Court records detail the following about the scheme and the Knox County woman’s victimization as part of it:
The
scammers rounded up telephone numbers for the elderly, though the
method is not detailed in the federal indictment. A scammer – usually a
man – would phone a scam target
and announce the victim had been entered in a sweepstakes for the
elderly and won millions. That part of the scam is a repeat of hundreds
of similar schemes seeking to con the elderly into forking out money or
bank account information.
But the scammers in this newest scheme added a twist.
“It
was part of the conspiracy that some elderly victims were sent a locked
safe, which was falsely represented to the victim as containing
sweepstakes winnings that could be accessed only by a key to be provided
to the victim at a later date,” the indictment stated.
Stalking their prey
In
January, the 75-year-old Knox County woman received a call from a man
bearing news of sweepstakes winnings. The male caller “feigned personal
interest" in the woman’s well-being in a series of phone calls Kolman
alleged were designed to garner the woman’s trust.
A co-conspirator in Florida shipped the woman a safe
in February. She received another call from the man who had promised
delivery of the safe. This time, he told her to write two checks,
totaling $21,000, with Myers as the payee, to cover taxes on her
winnings. She did, mailing them to an address he provided in Canyon
Lake, Texas.
The
indictment alleges Myers deposited one of those checks into her bank
account March 5. A day later, Myers showed up on the woman’s doorstep,
state court records show.
“(Myers) told the victim
more money was needed regarding the sweepstakes,” a warrant stated.
“(Myers) told the victim to go to two different SunTrust branch
locations and remove money from the victim’s account to give to
(Myers).”
With Myers behind the wheel, the woman
did as she was instructed, withdrawing $22,500 and giving it to Myers,
the warrant stated.
But when Myers demanded the
woman’s cellphone, saying her “boss wanted the phone,” the woman balked
and phoned authorities, according to warrants.
Knox
County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Jeff Monroe wrote in the warrant
deputies found the woman’s cash in Myers’ purse, along with one of the
checks the woman had been instructed to send to Texas.
Full Article & Source:
Knox woman helps unmask nationwide scam on elderly, using safes as props, promises of millions
Scammers are getting better at scamming and bolder. And the elderly are becoming a bigger population every day. I am grateful for this exposure of yet another successful scam.
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