‘Grandson’ Bilks Norfolk Man Out of $5,000

An 85-year-old Norfolk man is out $5,000 after falling victim to a tele­phone scam involving a man pretending to be his grandson in need of assistance, police said.

The Boardman Street resident got a call Saturday, March 13 from someone claiming to be his grandson saying he was in Canada and had been in a car ac­cident. “He said that they smelled beer on his breath and ‘I’m in trouble. Please don’t tell Mom and Dad. I need you to send $2,500 by wire transfer’,” said Norfolk Police Lieutenant Jon Carroll.

The man went to a store in Franklin and sent $2,500 by Western Union to Brampton, a city of about 430,000 in Ontario that is not far from Toronto. The man, whom Norfolk police aren’t indentifying publicly, got a second call two days later, Monday, March 15, say­ing his “grandson” needed an additional $2,500 for damages to the car, which he again sent by Western Union. That same day he went to Norfolk police, and learned that he had fallen victim to fraud. Norfolk police are investigating along with police in Brampton and Western Union’s fraud unit, Carroll said. But a Brampton police detective told Norfolk police that Brampton alone has more than 200 Western Union outlets, which makes investigating these par­ticular wire transfers difficult. In addi­tion, Carroll said, once the recipient got a transaction number, the money could be collected at any Western Union in the world. AARP Bulletin published a story this past March 1 on the so-called “Grand­parent Scam,” where someone from English-speaking Canada calls an elder­ly person in the United States claiming to be a grandchild in trouble and in des­perate need of cash. Some of the thieves appear to research their victims on the Internet, which allows them to come up with the correct names and family de­tails, according to the story. The AARP Bulletin story is available online at:

http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourmoney/scamalert/articles/scam_alert_my_gran...