Fighting financial crimes and fraud scams against senior citizens in McHenry County

An older person gets a call from a stranger posing as a governmental official, asking them to buy 40 gift cards, load them with $500 each and send them, under the pretext that there is “suspicious activity” involving their bank, Amazon or Social Security accounts.

This happens, a lot.

“All the scammer needs is one of out of 50″ to take the bait, and the unassuming victim can quickly be out thousands of dollars, McHenry County Assistant State’s Attorney William Bruce said.

It happened to Donna Vestal.

Last year, the 83-year-old Crystal Lake woman received an out-of-state call from an unknown number.

Using the playbook of another common swindle, the caller was a female who identified herself – and who Vestal believed to be – her granddaughter. The caller said she’d been in a terrible car accident in Texas, that she’d hit another car from behind and injured its passengers.

The person sounded like her granddaughter, who actually lives in Texas, Vestal recalled. The woman told Vestal a friend’s father, who is an attorney, was going to help her, but she needed money.

That call was followed by another, this time from a man who said he was an attorney named Mike Ross and he was going to help her granddaughter.

A box full of cash, a ‘granddaughter’ in trouble

He raised the stakes a notch by saying that a pregnant woman in the car lost her unborn baby in the crash. He told Vestal her granddaughter was in a lot of trouble and needed money to pay the family.

Vestal, like so many older people targeted, was taken in.

Thinking she was helping her granddaughter, she went to her bank, wrote a check for $15,750 and asked the teller to cash it. The teller grew suspicious and hesitated.

Vestal did not tell her about the callers because she was told not to tell anyone or the whole thing would end up in the newspapers. So she demanded the teller cash her check and said, “I’m OK. I know what I am doing.”

Then, as she was instructed, she put the cash in a box, sat on her front porch and waited for a man to come and pick it up. The man showed up on foot, took the box with the cash and walked away.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

The supposed lawyer called again, and this time said the family in the car her granddaughter hit was a powerful political family and was going to sue her granddaughter unless Vestal sent more money.

She was instructed to mail a box with $50,000 cash to an address in Florida.

But by this time, Vestal said she’d caught on. She told the man that she knew this was a scam and hung up. Then she called her granddaughter, who was fine and had not been involved in an accident.

“I never thought that would happen to me,” Vestal said, adding she’s sharing her story because she does not want this to happen to anyone else.

Vestal said she has had several other ill-willed callers, including some saying they are her “favorite grandson” or “favorite granddaughter” who needed money to get out of jail.

She also gets calls from people claiming to be border police, telling her she has a package at the border and to send money so they can send it to her. She gets callers who say her Amazon account has been hacked and she needs to send money to deal with it. She does not have an Amazon account.

Now whenever these calls come in, Vestal hangs up, and she urges others to do the same.

3 guilty in McHenry County

Tracking down such fraudsters and bringing them to justice has been a challenge for law enforcement. However, a recent case in McHenry County resulted in three convictions.

Last year, two Huntley residents and a Lake in the Hills man pleaded guilty to scamming two elderly, out-of-state women for thousands of dollars.

The trio who were running the scam in 2022 tricked the women into sending money to Chase bank accounts, via wire transfers and prepaid gift cards, by telling them through emails and phone calls that their Amazon accounts had been hacked, according to McHenry County court records.

Karina Burck, 21, of Huntley, pleaded guilty to theft by deception of less than $500, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to one year of supervision. She also was required to contribute one-third of the $18,700 in restitution that the group was ordered to pay to a 75-year-old woman in Ohio, according to court records.

Hatim Khan, 20, of Huntley and Caleb McCaughn, 21, of Lake in the Hills both pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft charges, were sentenced to a year of supervision and were ordered to pay their shares of the restitution to the Ohio victim, according to court documents. McCaughn was also ordered to pay $6,500 to an 81-year-old woman in Louisiana, records show.

Such financial scams victimizing seniors many times goes unnoticed unless – as in the recent convictions – banks notice odd activity or a family member becomes aware of the situation, Bruce said.

New local efforts to fight senior scams

Brandy Lester is the director of adult protective services for Senior Services Associates, which operates in McHenry, Kane and Kendall counties. The agency investigates reports of abuse and neglect as well as financial exploitation of seniors and adults with special needs.

Aiming to better protect seniors from financial crimes, Lester is in the process of creating a TRIAD organization in McHenry County.

TRIAD, which currently operates in Kane and Kendall counties, works with community groups, police departments and service agencies to create awareness of crimes against seniors and provide resources and outreach to prevent such scams.

TRIAD, which hosted its first meeting this month in the Crystal Lake senior center, helps connect victims of fraud with law enforcement. At times, TRIAD has even helped to pay bills if the person needs help after losing money to a scammer, Lester said.

Seniors can fall victim to such scams because, in some cases, they’re isolated and lonely or lack understanding of modern technology, Lester said, and get tricked into sending money quickly before their suspicions are raised.

Some such ploys are called sweetheart scams, while others involve the fraudster scaring a senior into believing they’ll be arrested or won’t receive Social Security payments if they don’t send money. Still others have been led to believe that they or a loved one will be hurt or killed if they do not send money, often in the form of gift cards, Lester said.

In some cases, victims are too frightened or embarrassed to report the scam to police or their family, she said.

Widow loses $35,000 in fraud

Lester said the number of scams is growing and is “pretty high.”

Last year, the agency received at least two reports a month of financial scams involving senior citizens in McHenry County.

Lester recalled that one victim the agency helped was a widowwho was defrauded of more than $35,000.

“The scammer called and convinced her that they would hurt her children if she didn’t do what they asked and do it immediately,” Lester said. “The scammer was very aggressive and manipulative over the phone, and the victim was fearful because they knew so much about her life and her children and felt they were watching her. She ended up using her credit card to purchase over $35,000 in gift cards and sent them out of state, she then had to cash in most of her savings to pay the credit card bill.”

The woman’s dog then became ill, and some other unexpected expenses came up, making it difficult to make her monthly mortgage payment. Senior Services used some grant funds to assist with some of her bills for the month, but the scammers were not located, and the $35,000 was never returned to the victim, Lester said.

Lester offered a few tips to remember regarding government imposter scams, which seem to be on the rise:

• The government will never call out of the blue and ask for social security numbers.
• No government official will ever ask for gift cards or wire transfers.
• A Social Security number can never be suspended.

McCaughn was accused of contacting the 81-year-old victim and saying he was a customer service representative from her bank, according to authorities and records; he said an unauthorized charge of $500 was made against her account and that the woman would have to refund it. Then he reached out to her again to say the bank accidentally refunded her account $5,000 and, to correct, it she needed to send him $6,500 which was the $5,000 plus $1,500 service fee, according to official accounts.

The woman followed McCaughn’s instructions, said Bruce, the McHenry County prosecutor.

Eventually, her bank recognized the large transactions on her account and stopped them.

According to the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, as the elderly population grows in Illinois and across the country, protecting them continues to be one of the most important responsibilities the office has.

From sweetheart scams to offers of earning big rewards, fraudsters perceive senior citizens as vulnerable and relatively wealthy due to their ability to access retirement accounts and pensions. Seniors are a “frequent target of wide range of consumer fraud and scams,” the office said on its website.

Those interested in attending joining TRIAD can email Lester at blester@seniorservicesassoc.org.

Tips and resources

• To report suspected scams, Lester recommends contacting the National Elder Fraud Hotline 833-372-8311 (888-FRAUD-11). This is a free resource created by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime for people to report fraud against anyone age 60 or older.
• Victims older than 60 also can call the Attorney General’s Senior Citizens Consumer Fraud Hotline at 800-243-5377 or 1-800-964-3013 (TTY).

These general tips can also help everyone protect themselves:

• If you’re ever suspicious about a call, hang up immediately. Find the organization’s contact information on your own (don’t use caller ID), and call or email them directly to discuss the situation.
• Never give out your Social Security number, banking information, credit card or Medicare number to anyone who contacts you through unsolicited calls, texts or emails.
• Never pay someone you do not know well with a gift card or wire transfer.
• Never click on an email link or attachment, unless you fully trust the sender.
• Sign up for the National Do Not Call Registry at donotcall.gov/.

• A free presentation for seniors on how to prevent identity theft, consumer fraud and other scams will take place at 1 p.m. Friday at the McHenry Township Senior Center, 3519 N. Richmond Road, Johnsburg. No registration required. Call 815-344-3555 for information.