On January 17th, an elderly lady in the Ashford community had been targeted by what appears to be a sophisticated scam, taking several thousand dollars from her. The scam started as people reaching out identifying themselves as being with the “FDIC”. They said her account was hacked and she had to retrieve money from her bank and give it to them so they could activate her new account. The victim was instructed not to tell anyone about what was going and convinced her no one could be trusted, including her own family. Fortunately, deputies were alerted to the scam, and were able to set up a sting operation. Lengthy phone calls, lasting hours, went on with the suspects as they sent a courier to collect $25,000. What they got instead, was a warm welcome from the Sheriff’s Office with handcuffs.
This will no doubt take some time to process since we believe this is not an isolated event. Other agencies have alerted us our case may be connected to other cases and this is being investigated as a large-scale scamming operation. This was a unique fraud case where a real person was sent to pick up the money. Most of these scams are completed over the phone or internet and there is no contact with a real person.
We want to warn our community of the dangers of these sophisticated scams. Please don’t fall victim to their manipulative games and talk to your loved ones about these types of scams!