Los Alamos woman victim of a $240K scam, affidavit says

Couple allegedly posed as federal officials

A Texas couple face criminal charges after they were accused of posing as federal officers and scamming an elderly Los Alamos woman out of $240,000.

Tiburcio Bazaldua, 67, and Diana Williams, 52, of San Antonio, Texas, were charged with fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in Los Alamos County Magistrate Court.

A woman had contacted Los Alamos police in September 2020 and said she had lost $240,000 to phone scammers. She said she had been directed to send the money to “federal officers” by people who described a scenario in which her identity had been stolen and her money was being used by cartels in Colombia.

The scammers also told her a Toyota Corolla rented in her name had been found near New Mexico’s border with Mexico with a significant amount of blood in it and might have been involved in a homicide, the arrest warrant affidavit said.

Her Medicare and Social Security were being “deactivated” unless she sent money to the federal officers to “prove to the government” she was not supporting cartels, she told police the scammers said.

The woman spoke on the phone with “several individuals claiming to be federal officers or employees of the treasury department,” the affidavit said. One cashier’s check she sent for $200,000 was delivered to Bazaldua and was cashed later that month.

Los Alamos investigators received a recording from San Antonio police of a conversation between a credit union fraud investigator and the couple, according to the affidavit. They told the fraud investigator the money had been sent to them from “a relative.”

When they were interviewed by San Antonio police, neither Bazaldua nor Williams could provide a reason why the money was sent to them, why they withdrew the money or how they knew the woman who sent it to them, the affidavit said.

Both said they cashed the check at a local credit union and later withdrew nearly $200,000. They also confirmed the address where the Los Alamos woman was instructed to mail the cashier’s check, the affidavit said.

“Both Bazaldua and Williams admitted to being instructed to say certain things to bypass the fraud investigator’s questions and suspicions,” it continued.

The Los Alamos Police Department could not be reached for comment on the investigation.

According to the FBI, New Mexicans over the age of 60 lost just more than $7 million to elder fraud scams in 2020. The agency defines these schemes by several categories including romance, sweepstakes or government impersonation scams — the latter of which the FBI takes very seriously, agency spokesman Frank Fisher said.

“Federal agents will never call and ask you for money or try to get you to send money or threaten to arrest you if you don’t send money,” he said. “That’s not how federal agents work. We ask people to hang up and call that federal agency and confirm whether that call was legitimate or not.”

Fisher said there has been an uptick in scams since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. He added it’s important to be skeptical of any offer that seems too good to be true and to report it immediately to local law enforcement or the FBI if you believe you may have been scammed.

“The sooner they report the scams, the better the chance of recovering the money,” he said. “And that’s why we ask family members who have elderly parents or grandparents or siblings to stay in touch with them.”