NC REALITY CHECK Lyft driver asked to haul cash disrupts ‘grandparent scam’

Lyft driver Lori Kimbler was worried about the man who wobbled on a cane to her car and asked for a little more time but never returned. So she knocked on his door to make sure he was OK.

The 79-year-old man was sitting at a kitchen table covered with cash.

“I’m still counting the money,” Kimbler said he told her.

“Can you help me?” he asked, frantic and struggling to count out the bills as his hands shook, she said.

A Lyft driver based in eastern North Carolina, Kimbler had accepted a fare to pick up a person, who later called and said she would actually pick up important “paperwork” from a Pamlico County home.

“I didn’t think I was bringing that kind of paper,” she said of the scene she witnessed in the man’s kitchen.

Lori Kimbler

It’s a scheme that Kimbler, the man’s family and law enforcement say older North Carolinians must guard themselves against.

THE PHONE CALL

Around 4 p.m. on April 26, the man, who asked that his name not be published, received a phone call from who he thought was his grandson, he said in a phone interview.

The caller said he had a broken nose, stitches in his lip and a broken leg after he was in a crash. And police found an open bottle of alcohol in his car.

The voice didn’t sound like his grandson, the man said, but he figured the injuries affected his voice.

Just as the man hung up from that phone call, the phone rang again, he said. A next caller asked for $6,500 to get his grandson out of jail, which the grandfather would get back after his grandson goes to court.

The caller said a Lyft driver would pick up the money. The man, who his grandchildren call Pops, had just enough time to get to the bank before it closed, so he went.

That’s when Kimbler got involved. The Lyft fare was prepaid. The customer said her name was Marabell, that she worked for an attorney and that she wanted the “paperwork” delivered to Raleigh.

After Kimbler entered the man’s home, she helped him stuff $6,500 in four envelopes. She also wrote out a makeshift receipt, giving him her name and telephone number.

But as she drove off with the money, the 66-year-old mother of three started to worry.

“It didn’t feel right,” she said.

SCAMMERS TRACKED THE DRIVER

About 10 minutes into her drive to Raleigh, Kimbler pulled over to a gas station to fill up. Suddenly “Marabell” called, asking her why she stopped.

When Kimbler stopped again a few minutes later, just to see what would happen, the woman called again. The tracking made Kimbler even more suspicious.

Kimbler called Lyft to ask if drivers could even deliver money. A person put her on hold for 20 minutes and then the call was disconnected, she said.

That’s when Kimbler reached out to the man and suggested they reach out to his grandson, she said.

The man did. The grandson, it turned out, was not in jail. He was driving with his girlfriend Hannah Watts, 24, en route to a vacation in Wilmington.

“Well, I just sent $6,500 out the door to get you out,” the man told his grandson, Watts said during a phone interview.

The couple spoke to Kimbler