A SENIOR citizen has revealed she thought she was helping her favorite athlete, however, she quickly realized she was part of a major scam.
An elderly woman believed she sparked up a conversation with Phillies’ shortstop Trea Turner after defending him on social media, but it was really a scammer in disguise.
An elderly woman lost $50,000 after believing she was talking to her favorite sports playerCredit: Fox29
The elderly woman believed she was tCredit: Fox29
“He was relentless, but he’s convincing, he’s repeating things that I knew Trea Turner did on the ballfield,” The woman, who asked to not be named, told Fox 29.
“He kept harping on it for about three weeks so finally I said, ‘Alright, what do you want?’”
The impersonator found her on Facebook and asked her to continue the conversation on Google Chat.
The two spoke for weeks, with him showing photos of Turner’s family, and exchanging personal messages.
After building a relationship with the victim, he began asking her for money to send to different accounts to help invest in properties.
Believing she was talking to the real sports star, she sent over $50,000 to the scammer.
However, once she realized this wasn’t Turner, she turned to the Towamencin Township Police for help.
“We don’t have any local suspects, we believe this is outside of the country, but we’re doing what we can,” said Lt. Geoffrey Wainwright explained.
She was able to recieve a small portion of her money back, but police are still working with federal partners to find the scammer.
“He was so convincing, I’m thinking I’m not stupid, but he got me, I just want to warn people, be careful of this,” she said.
“We’re still financially fine. He did not ruin us. He didn’t win.”.
The U.S. Sun has reached out to the Phillies for comment.
SCAMMING TECHNOLOGY
Some scammers are now using advanced technology to take money from their victims.
Andrew Whaley, senior technical director at Norwegian app security company Promon previously warned The U.S. Sun how easy it has become for fraudsters to pretend to be someone else.
“New technology is enabling an updated form of catfishing, where a fraudster can generate artificial videos or images, often using real human faces or voices,” he explained.
A woman who went under the fake name Sue explained that she thought she met the love of her life on Match.com.
She built a relationship with someone named Santos, to the point of talking about marriage.
Sue trusted him so much that when he asked for help with business expenses, she quickly obliged.
“$150,000, $250,000, $75,000…make a check for $250,00 and then make another $50,000 check,” Sue recalled to CBS News.
“People say ‘How can you give money to a stranger?’ He wasn’t a stranger at that point.”
Sue ended up giving Santos $2.5 million over the course of 18 months.
It wasn’t until she received a call from the Secret Service did she realize she had been scammed.
“When he said there wasn’t even a Santos around, that was hard to get my brain wrapped around,” Sue admitted as she noted the “psychological manipulation” used to “hook” victims.
When speaking on the situation, she explained it was a traumatic period of her life.
“You don’t know how they mess with your brain. They manipulate. They punish you. It’s dramatically changed me,” she said.
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