82-year-old granny loses $260,000 to phone scammer

She was one of four recent victims in Upper Darby; another lost $67G

UPPER DARBY » An elusive thief who hit an 82-year-old township grandmother for nearly $260,000 when she fell prey to a phone scam is possibly long gone with the cash, and the victim has little to no recourse, Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said Tuesday in issuing a stern warning.

The incident is one of four similar cases brought to the attention of township police since May 27, and Chitwood said residents, particularly senior citizens, need to be more vigilant and less trusting when it comes to requests for their money.

“Do not send cash to anybody, call someone in the family, get somebody else involved,” Chitwood said in almost scolding tone.

Likening the con artists to “predators,” he said they can easily mine sites online for personal information about potential victims and their family members to gain trust and credibility.

“The tragedy is these people buy into these scams and these predators take their life savings … For this 82-yearold, it’s devastating,” Chitwood said. “Seniors are too trusting, they’re easy marks.”

In a separate incident reported on June 14, he cited another township woman who told police that she wired as much as $67,000 to a person she met on Facebook who said he was stuck on a ship and needed the funds to get off.

“It’s usually a similar scenario, somebody getting locked up,” Chitwood said of the deceptive tales.

In two of the four recent cases, Chitwood said individuals recognized and reported a potential problem, and police were able to intercept funds — a fortunate but uncommon scenario.

In the 82-year-old grandmother’s case, he said she received a call from a person identifying himself as “Sgt. Perry,” who said her grandson, whom Perry knew by full name, was in a car accident and had been arrested. The grandmother also received calls from other men who identified themselves as Sgt. Williams and Agent Sean Flemming, according to a police report.

When the grandmother spoke to a person who identified himself as her grandson, he told her he needed $9,500 for bail. According to the report, the grandmother sent cash via Federal Express to an address in Newark, Del.

“After she sent that, they called back and said they needed another $250,000,” which she wired from her account to an address in New York, the report states.

The scammers told the grandmother that she was under a gag order and not to tell anyone about the transactions. If she did, they told her, it would be a federal crime.

The grandmother told police that her grandson, who resides outside Pennsylvania, has been in trouble with the law before in his home state of North Carolina. The callers, she said, told her they were calling from North Carolina.

In another case recently investigated by Upper Darby police, a 60-year-old Upper Darby woman said that a person she friended on Facebook asked her to wire him money. The so-called friend told her that he was stuck on a ship in the Philippines and needed the money to get off the vessel. The company he was on the ship for was Ximex Delivery Express.

According to police, the woman received a check from her so-called friend and his company for $715,000. She was told to hold on to the check until he got back to the states, when he would cash it.

In the meantime, according to Chitwood, she sent her friend $67,000 through Moneygram between February and June 14. She also made deposits into various banks for the so-called friend, whom authorities believe is in Manila.

One of the cases in which police were able to intercept funds before they fell into the wrong hands was reported on June 10. According to that report, an Upper Darby resident told township police that he received an envelope addressed to him that contained $2,500. The return address was an UPS store in Florida. Soon after he received the envelope, the man began to get threatening phone calls and emails asking for him to send cash to Jamaica.

Some of the calls came from a female with a Jamaican accent who identified herself as Shirley Hendryx, the same name as the individual who sent the initial package, according to police. She asked him to forward the money to an address in Jamaica.

He also received phone and text messages from a male with a Jamaican accident threatening to harm the township’s man’s brother if he didn’t forward the money.

Police tracked down a woman by the name of Hendryx who resides in Florida. The 89-year-old woman said she received a phone call indicating that she had won a large sum of money, but before she could collect, she had to forward money to cover the taxes on her winnings. Hendryx said she packed up cash and sent it to a person in Pennsylvania.

Back on May 27, township police received a call from a 77-year-old woman from Montana who said she was a victim of a telephone scam. She had received a call from someone pretending to be her grandson stating that he had been arrested. When the woman received another call from an individual named “Detective Taylor,” he coerced her into sending $10,000 to a Clinton Road address in Upper Darby.

The woman went to an UPS store in Great Falls and sent the money overnight to a man, whose name was later determined to be fictitious, at the Clinton Road address, according to a police report. After the money had been sent, the woman and her husband talked about the exchange and realized it might be a scam. The woman called her local police department. She also tried to have UPS stop shipment, but to no avail, according to the police report.

When Upper Darby police went to the Clinton Road address, they were able to retrieve a package with a return address in Montana. In addition, police spoke to three people at that address about the package, but no one had any knowledge about it, according to Chitwood and the police report. No arrest was made in the case.