Insider Buzz: Elderly California woman loses $250,000 to foreign lottery scam
The elderly Lodi woman answered her telephone just like anyone else would.
A voice at the other end told her she'd won a lottery and that she'd soon get the first check in the mail. When the check arrived and proved that the lottery was legitimate, she was to send back a check to pay the taxes on her winnings.
But then the foreign check didn't clear the woman's bank -- after she'd already sent off a real check of her own. The lottery officials said something had gone wrong, and they'd get another check sent out to her.
In the meantime, they needed more money for out-of-country tariffs.
By the time the woman realized she'd been scammed, she was out a quarter of a million dollars.
To make matters worse, Lodi Police Sgt. Dennis Cunningham said he's seen at least six similar reports from Lodi residents come across his desk in the past two months.
The woman, whom Cunningham did not identify because she was so embarrassed she would barely even talk to officers, lost more money than those recently scammed in similar schemes.
However, she's far from being the only one. Many victims never report the crime to police, Cunningham said, so the actual number of scams is likely much higher.
The San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department, too, is getting more and more such calls, and just last week spokeswoman Nellie Stone saw a report in which a Stockton woman lost $20,000.
"We get these cases more often than we'd like," she said. "We're dealing with some of our most vulnerable, and that's our elders."
Deputies and officers take reports on such cases, but in most of them, they can't go far with the investigation.
The suspects in Lodi's recent cases have come from countries including Columbia, Australia and the Bahamas, Cunningham said. Neither the police nor sheriff's departments have the resources to fly detectives to other countries in search of a possible suspect.
Even then, the suspects use temporary addresses and telephone numbers.
"As soon as the (victims) quit sending them money, that number is gone," Cunningham said.
Local law enforcement agencies can notify one another of the crimes and tell the victims what steps to take if their identity has also been stolen, but their only real recourse is to educate the public.
It ultimately comes down to common sense, Cunningham said.
"If you won the lottery, they're going to send you the money. They're not going to make you pay the taxes; they'll just deduct that from your final check."