CLEARLAKE OAKS – The Lake County Sheriff's Office is warning area residents – especially seniors – to beware of a recent scam that bilked a Clearlake Oaks couple out of thousands of dollars.

Capt. James Bauman reported Monday that the elderly couple – 90-year-old Kenneth Crane and his wife, 87-year-old Audrey Crane – made a report to the sheriff's office on Feb. 6 regarding the scam, in which they lost thousands of dollars to a man posing as their grandson.

It's known as the “grandparent scam,” and it's been the source of lost funds for seniors from Connecticut to Washington and parts in between, according to reports from state officials and consumer groups.

The Connecticut Better Business Bureau reported last October that one grandmother sent her supposed grandchild $15,000.

The Washington State Attorney General's Office reported last summer that the scam was targeting seniors in that state. The scammers – believed to be Canadian criminals – pose as relatives to try to get their elderly victims to wire cash for medical bills, car repairs and bail.

That was the case for the Cranes. According to Bauman, the Cranes reported that early last week they received a phone call from a man claiming to be their grandson, who told them that he had been arrested for driving under the influence in Canada.

The caller, who the Cranes said sounded distressed, told them that he needed $3,000 to bail out of jail. The couple, Bauman reported, has no reason not to believe it wasn't their grandson.

So the couple immediately went to their bank, withdrew the $3,000 and transferred it to Canada by way of a Moneygram from the Wal-Mart store in Clearlake. Bauman said when they returned home, the Cranes got another call from the same man asking for the reference number for the Moneygram, which they provided.

The next day, the Cranes received another phone call from the man posing as their grandson, who told them he needed more money, stating his alleged DUI arrest was the result of a car accident and the person he hit was demanding $10,000 to compensate for a neck injury, according to Bauman.

The caller asked the couple to send another $3,500 to him in Canada. Bauman said the Cranes again withdrew $3,000 from their bank and sent the money to who they thought was their grandson in Canada by way of a Moneygram. Again when they returned home that day, the man called again to get the Moneygram reference number.

When another day had passed and the Cranes had not heard back from their “grandson” to thank them for the money, Audrey Crane began calling around trying to locate the grandson to see if he was alright. Bauman said she eventually learned her grandson had been at his home in Idaho the whole time and had not called from Canada requesting money.

Bauman said the sheriff’s office took a similar report from an elderly man in Clearlake Oaks in late January. Someone had called him, also claiming to be his grandson and also claiming to have been arrested in Canada.

The caller in that case asked the man to send $6,000 but, fortunately, before sending any money, the Oaks man contacted his daughter and mother of the grandson and learned the grandson was in Los Angeles and had not been to Canada at all, said Bauman.

There isn’t nearly as much advice on preventing fraud as there are ways to be defrauded, said Bauman. However, aside from protecting one’s personal information, members of the public are encouraged to always verify unsolicited transactions of any kind before acting on them.

 

Here is some advice from the attorney's general of the states of Arizona and Washington to help avoid falling prey to the scams.

– Don't “fill in the blanks” for the con. If someone calls and says, “It's your granddaughter/grandson,” the grandparent should in turn ask, “Which one?” Officials say that the scammer usually will hang up.

– Verify your relative's true location. Call another family member to find out where the grandchild's true location. Call the grandchild' number – home, work or school – that you're most familiar with, not the number provided by the person on the phone.

– Don’t send money unless you have verified that your relative is really in trouble. If a caller asks for your bank account number or urges you to send money via Western Union or MoneyGram for any reason, that’s a good indication of a scam. Cons prefer wire transfers because they are fast, there are transfer agents in most communities and funds can be picked up in multiple locations.

– Never give out personal identifying information such as bank account or credit card account numbers to anyone you do not know and never send money to an unknown account or entity.

If you think you've been contacted by a scammer or have fallen victim to a scam, immediately call the local law enforcement agency for your area: Lake County Sheriff's Office, 262-4200; Lakeport Police Department, 263-5491; or Clearlake Police Department, 994-8251.

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