A North Bay woman is very thankful after a local bank teller saved her from losing $6,000 in a grandparent scam recently.
The woman, in her nineties, asked not to be identified, so we’ll use the name Sally. She told BayToday it’s the second time in the past year she’s been victimized by unscrupulous scammers.
This time, it involved her granddaughter, who lives in Elora.
Sally got a call on her phone, and the scammer sounded exactly like her granddaughter. “It was her voice. There’s no question, and she sounded somewhat distressed.”
The granddaughter claimed to have “a vicious sore throat,” and a friend had offered to take her to a clinic to get some help.
“I was with this friend in her car when we were stopped by police. They searched the car, and they found drugs in the trunk,” said the granddaughter.
Sally said the granddaughter’s voice told her she was being held in custody and she needed bail money.
“Can you send $6,000?” said the voice.
“I said, okay, leave that with me, and we’ll see what we can do. A man’s voice then came on the phone, and he said he was the policeman who was investigating this situation, and he told me his name, David Peterson. He gave me his phone number, and he said, ‘If you take care of this right away, we will release her right away, and we’ll take good care of her.'”
Sally agreed to send the money.
“So I went to the Royal Bank, and the lovely young woman who waited on me said, ‘This sounds really creepy.’ I said, I agree and she said, ‘Let’s look it up.'”
The bank teller phoned the Guelph police and said, “Do you have someone on the staff by the name of David Peterson? Badge number 840.”
The answer was “No, that person doesn’t exist.”
See: Deepfake scams like the one that targeted Sault senior are ‘increasingly common’
Sally wanted to tell BayToday her story because she feels the scammers use such sophisticated voice technology that anyone can become a victim.
Just last year, she was victimized similarly; this time, the scammers used the voice of her grandson, who lives in Michigan.
“I got caught. My mother’s family is from Italy. Everyone was born and bred in Italy and came to northern Ontario a long time ago. So, there’s a strong Italian culture in my family. And in Italian, a grandmother is a Nona. My ‘grandson’ phoned me, and he was distressed, and he gave me this story, and it was his voice, and he ended his conversation with me saying, ‘Love you, Nona.’ And that’s the way we always ended a phone call. And that hooked me like you wouldn’t believe.”
She handed over some money.
“I regret it to this day, but my God, they are so clever in the way they can catch you on something as simple as ‘love you, Nona.’ It works.”
Sally has no idea if the two incidents are linked or if she is on some sort of “sucker list.”
“But I’m a grandmother, and I’m an easy mark, I guess.”
The experience left her horrified.
“I’m so arrogant. I thought I was smart enough to see through that. But the ‘Love you, Nona,’ got me hook, line, and sinker. That’s what got me. And it worked. It worked. I was just horrified that they caught me. There’s no question. And I’m on edge all the time now.”
Sally never answers her phone if she doesn’t recognize the number.
“You can never be too careful in today’s world, and it’s staggering the technology of what they can make a voice do. I dodged the bullet this time, but it’s left me quite staggered. I thought I was smart enough to be able to deal with it. It turns out I’m not.”
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