PARMA, Ohio — A woman in her late 90s nearly lost thousands of dollars to scammers — until a group of people at a Parma senior center joined forces to stop it.
Staff at the Donna Smallwood Activity Center in Parma grew suspicious after a center transportation driver noticed the woman had purchased large amounts of gift cards during a routine trip around town.
Elizabeth Fulkroad with the Donna Smallwood Activity Center said the driver raised the alarm.
“She was a little concerned that one of our seniors had purchased large amounts of gift cards.”
The driver asked the woman about the transaction, but she denied that anything was wrong.
“The resident denied there was any problem.”
The next day, the woman made an urgent request to be taken to FedEx. Staff grew more concerned.
“She wasn’t saying that there was a problem. But there just were enough red flags that we wanted to proceed.”
That’s when Brenda Sneed stepped in. The woman claimed she was sending a package to her son — but something didn’t add up.
“She assured me she was sending this to her son, and I had the driver take a photo and it was not her son on the envelope.”
Staff alerted the woman’s family, who contacted Parma Police.
Investigators quickly discovered she was caught up in three different scams. Fulkroad said the fraudsters used emotional manipulation to reel her in.
“They drew on her heartstrings, like, hey, you’ve won this lottery type thing. Think of all the good things you can do for your family. You know, you just need to send us this.”
The scheme was elaborate. Scammers sent the woman a lock box they claimed contained her jackpot winnings — and told her she would receive the code to open it once she sent them money. Sneed said the scammers had coached the woman on what to say.
“They had groomed her to keep telling us it was her son and she was sending them Amazon cards to buy a car with.”
Because staff alerted FedEx, the payment for the lockbox code was never shipped.
What was inside the package surprised even the staff.
“When we went and picked up the package, we really thought it was going to be this envelope of gift cards. And it turned out to be a blank check for $9,000 that they convinced her to send.”
A separate $1,000 check was also recovered.
That money would have been added to the $1,500 the victim had already lost after giving scammers the gift card serial numbers she had purchased.
Sneed said stopping the scam was deeply meaningful.
“Just a wonderful feeling to be able to help her in this terrible, terrible situation.”
Fulkroad credited ongoing outreach from agencies like the Cuyahoga County Scam Squad — which hosts Scam-O events to educate residents and staff — as a major factor in the outcome.
“And so by that dialogue and programming, it really educated me as well as our seniors of potential things that you might not think are problematic, but really are.”
“These are professionals. They prey on people. And, you know, our job as a community is to protect our vulnerable.”
The community awareness effort appears to be working. Parma Police Public Information Officer Scott Traxler told me more residents are using police as a sounding board — and it’s making a difference.
“Yes, yeah, we’ve seen an uptick in that, which is fantastic because along with that, we’ve seen a downtick in the amount of fraud reports recently.”
Traxler said the number of scams circulating remains high, but the number of people falling for them is decreasing slightly — a sign the messaging is making an impact.
Parma officers regularly visit community and senior centers to discuss trending scams, what to watch for, and how to report them.
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