Bank foils $18K potential loss to elderly Sugar Grove customer

SUGAR GROVE – You get a call and someone says, “Grandma, I need money for bail” or some other kind of trouble and it’s urgent.

It’s called the Grandparent Scam, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

A bank thwarted that scam Oct. 4 when it refused to release $18,000 to an elderly customer who believed she needed it to pay a lawyer to get her granddaughter out of jail.

The police report did not include the name of the bank. Local bank branches in Sugar Grove either were not involved in halting the fraud, did not know or could not say when a reporter contacted them.

According to the police report, the resident received a call from someone purporting to be her granddaughter, who said she had been in a car crash with a member of President Joe Biden’s family and was charged with reckless driving.

A man came on the line and said he was an attorney and needed $18,000 for bail to get the granddaughter out of jail, according to the report.

The resident went to her bank and attempted to withdraw the cash, but the bank would not allow it because of the possibility that it was fraud, according to the report.

Police asked the resident if she was sure it was her granddaughter whom she spoke to earlier and the resident said it sounded like her granddaughter.

Police asked the resident if she attempted to call her granddaughter, but she was told the phone was taken away because she was arrested, according to the report.

Police asked her to call her granddaughter’s cellphone, which she did, and the granddaughter answered, according to the report.

The officer asked the granddaughter if she had been in a crash and she said she had not been in a crash, that she had not called her grandmother that morning and that she was at home and fine, according to the report.

The officer checked the resident’s list of incoming calls and found one labeled “Private.”

“At that time, she realized that she was scammed,” according to the report. “I advised [her] to not answer her phone to anyone unless she recognized the caller or if it was a family member.”

The officer followed up with the resident’s son-in-law who said he would take some precautions with his mother-in-law’s finances to see that she does not fall victim to future fraud attempts, according to the report.

The FTC urges people not to trust the voice on the line or in a message if there is a claim that a family member or friend needs money in an emergency, according to its website, consumer.ftc.gov.

One way to test is to ask what kind of dog they have or where did they spend last Thanksgiving, an answer the real person would know, according to the FTC.

Scams can be reported to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov.