First, scammers used MoneyGram to get money from their victims. When enough consumers recognized that as a red flag, scammers shifted to gift cards.
Now that more people are getting wise to that ruse, scammers appear to have found another way to receive their ill-gotten gains – Coinstar.
Coinstar places machines in supermarkets, mostly as a service to consumers who have accumulated jars of coins. By pouring the coins through the machine, the consumer gets a code that can be exchanged for cash.
These machines also take bills, and that’s what scammers are exploiting.
An 83-year-old woman in the San Francisco area has told her story to KGO-TV, which started with a phone call from a scammer, pretending to be a police officer, who had cloned her grandson’s voice.
The fake grandson said he had been drinking and driven the wrong way on a one-way street, hitting another car.
“He was so distraught and crying,” said the woman, whose first name is Lois. She asked that her last name not be used.
The officer told Lois bail would be $9,500. Later, another scammer called, pretending to be a prosecutor, who told Lois the bail had been raised to $15,000 because the woman in the other car had suffered a miscarriage.
So Lois went to the bank and withdrew $15,000 in $100 bills. As instructed, she went to a Coinstar location and began feeding the bills into the machine.
Some people tried to help Lois avoid the scam
All through the process, Lois said people tried to intervene to prevent her from being ripped off. First, people at the bank questioned why she needed so much money. The scammers had told her to tell the bank she was going to an estate sale where they would not accept a check.
While feeding $100 bills into the Coinstar machine, Lois said several shoppers asked what she was doing and tried to warn her that she was being scammed. But because Lois thought she had heard her grandson’s voice, she could not be persuaded.
Of course, there was no police officer nor was there a prosecutor. And even if they were real, they couldn’t have told her what the bail was because that would be determined by a judge, after a court appearance.
But in the heat of the scam, Lois wasn’t thinking clearly. The money is gone and can’t be traced.
For consumers, the takeaway is this: anyone who creates a sense of urgency about something and demands to be paid through Coinstar is probably running a scam. If you think a family member might be in trouble, hang up and call that person.
It could save a lot of heartache, and certainly a lot of money.