So incredibly sad. Kudos to that Walmart employee. Would you consider mentioning that to his or her manager?

Walmart gets such a bad rap, but people forget that the store employees are our neighbors. They really do care about the well being of the folks who come in and out of the store.

We have one of those no call blocks on our phone, so we don't get those kinds of calls. I've sort of wished someone would call about a grandchild. But that's my evil twin speaking. We, unfortunately, have no grandchildren, and circumstances being what they are, we will never have a grandchild.

I echo the thought - kudos to that Walmart employee!

Employee of the year, in my book.

Great catch by the employee. I have heard that several times this has happened at Walmart and other stores. They are instructed to be on alert for things like this and the elderly.

I got one of those calls. I knew it wasn't anyone related to either of us so I played along with the little sh#thead. He thought he had me till I said yes sweetie I know exactly who you are, the little worthless piece of cr@p that tries to con old people. I bet your real family would be so proud of you. Be prepared for your karma. And I hung up. Never got another one.

It's just another way some of these young people think they can get what they want right now and not work for it. Such entitlement. It's disgusting.

Thanks goodness for your step father. Now would be a good time for some elderly education safety counseling

https://www.fbi.gov/scams-and-safety/common-fraud-schemes/seniors

http://www.aplaceformom.com/senior-care-resources/articles/senior-fraud-prevention

There's a lot of good information about this available online. Provide your elderly friends, family and loved ones with this information it could save them from tragedy.

Google elderly scam education for good resources.

https://www.ncoa.org/economic-security/money-management/scams-security/top-10-scams-targeting-seniors/

Good going by that Walmart employee. Someone was thinking.

Your stepfather's acting on a phone call without further discussion or checking within the family may mean he's only one phone call away from being conned again.

I sure would not fall stuff like that. I have gotten that call twice over the years. Each time I tell them, my grandson is only two years old and that was the truth at the time. I won't fall for such calls of any kind. Oh, then they proceeded to say they had the wrong number!

Sue

Still wish they would invent a phone that blocked all calls except for the ones you add in your address list. I'd be first in line for that phone. LOL

Do your parents answer to Grandma/Grandpa?

This nearly happened to my son's GF's mother, who is in her late 70s. She got a call exactly like this"Grandma, I'm in trouble and need money" She answered by saying the GS's name "Joey?" of course the caller said "yes, it's me". The caller said to buy an iTunes card worth $500 and send it (or wire it? -- not sure). She got as far as buying the card when someone caught on and stopped the transaction . It may well have been a store employee since they live in a smaller town. The worst thing that came from it is that she is now stuck with a $500 iTunes card.

The world has so many hateful people.

I've never had that one happen but I did get the "Microsoft" person in a thick accent call me and ask if I was near my computer .I played along with him for five minutes and then I yelled an expletive in his ear and hung up. And we have donotcall.

And we have donotcall.

Remember that scam callers are crooks and/or are out of the country and do not obey any US do-not-call laws.

I got a call from Apple concerning a "virus" that my machine was sending out. I played along for a while and then started laughing. I do not have an Apple computer. I imagine at one point they would have asked for a credit card number; if only I could have contained my laughter and expletives. :-)

This also happened to my aunt. She got a phone call that her grandson, Cody, was in trouble. The caller said they needed $5,000 and it had to be in gift cards and not to tell anyone. She drove 40 miles into town and went to Target and bought a bunch of gift cards. A Target employee told her not to do it. She then went to another store to get more gift cards and then that employee was able to talk her out of it. Luckily, she was able to return all of the gift cards.

Brushworks, I don't know exactly how they prefaced the call to him, if it was "grandpa" or what. When he answers the phone, he always says, "This is 'Fred.' "

He has different names from different groups of grandchildren.

We're quite thankful for the clerk, and yes, they let management know about the "good catch."

We have a friend who almost fell for this scam. Her grandson was "stuck in Italy". We talked her out of it. The grandson even lived with her!! What the heck would he be doing in Italy without her knowing?

This happened just today in a town near me:

A scammer called the woman and told her that her granddaughter had been arrested and was being held in jail, police said. In order to have her granddaughter released from jail, the woman was told she had to purchase $4,000 in Walmart gift cards and then call back with the card and pin numbers.

After complying with the scammer's demands, the woman was told she had to purchase an additional $4,000 in gift cards and repeat the same process. The victim bought the second batch of gift cards, but the victim's daughter was at her home when the victim returned from buying the second batch of gift cards. The victim's daughter called police and reported the scam, police said.

The victim lost the first $4,000 from the scam, but did not lose the money from the additional gift card purchase, police said. The investigation continues.

i'm just wondering what happens to these creeps when they are caught. Do they get real jail time for preying on the elderly, or just a slap on the wrist and released to do it again?

A friend just posted on FB that she got a call from a police office in the city her son lives and told her that her son had gotten a ride to work with a friend, the car was pulled over and drugs were found. She said he was very professional sounding and believed it until he asked for gift cards. Man....they are hitting hard!

I can't believe someone falls for purchasing gift cards from Walmart. I can understand the scammers asking for cash, or payment with a credit card.

It just boggles my mind that someone could think that the police want you to go to a Walmart!

When my father in law started falling for scams like this, my eldest brother in law started the process for obtaining the financial power of attorney (I think) over their bank accounts and closed out all of the credit cards. He'd been falling for scams disguised as herbal supplements for quite some time and had 'subscriptions' set up to automatically deduct their monthly payment from his cards. Poor dad didn't even know what was happening and couldn't figure out how his CC balance was so high every month or why cases of some supplement were delivered regularly. He thought that the supplements were free! There are lots of ways to prey on the elderly.

My grandfather passed a few months ago so we are still in the process of sorting out his estate.

He had Alzheimer's and my parents started caring for him in 2010. He was a huge numismatist and he had quite a collection of old coins and bills.

My parents just found one last safety deposit box he must have opened after he started being affected by the Alzheimer's.

In it was a bunch of overpriced money and I volunteered to look up the values on it.

The more I researched, the more pissed off I got.

What this company was doing wasn't "technically" illegal but it was definitely designed to prey on those not entirely of sound mind.

My grandfather was such an intelligent man and so methodical and dedicated, the fact that this company was able to trick him just angers me.

I know it isn't entirely in the same vein as the original post but it is still, IMHO, targeting the same group.

Since we are now the owner of my husband's family farm we had all the mail forwarded to us. We have been getting so many letters from all kinds of places saying thank you for your financial support and asking for more. We had no idea she was sending out money. His brother lived in the house with her. When we realized that she was in the stages of dementia he took over the Check book and bank accounts. Apparently some damage had already been done. It wasn't large amounts thankfully but any amount is too much. It is disappointing that there are those kinds of people out there.

Two months ago, I got the same call except it was for some kind of money transfer scheme. The MO was the same: Go to Walmart to use their FedEX connection to transfer funds to a New York location. While pretending to take a break to get information they requested, I traced their phone number and found they were calling from the Caribbean Islands. They were very smooth and professional sounding characters. When confronted with the information that I knew they were directing me to an off-shore phone number, they replied, Oh sure, that's right. We have offices all over the world. That number is for our corporate lawyer that we had asked you to call to verify that this was a legitimate operation. Those guys were very smooth.

Later, that scam was publicized in our newspaper. It seems that several people in our neighborhood had been contacted.

There just are some horrible people in the world. I never answer the phone anymore unless it rings twice and then I look at caller ID. Even though we have donotcall, stuff gets thru. I told the story before. We were expecting a call from Apple and by chance, this call came and husband assumed it was Apple But it wasn't and he almost messed up. I kept telling him to hang up. I called the office number and of course someone answered. They cover all the bases. When I finally traced the number, it was Nigeria.

In my area, the scam du jour is people coming to your door with a clipboard and some kind of ID, and using words to make it sound like - without actually specifically saying that - they are from some government agency, and they are here to do an inspection of your water system, for example. They ask if your pipes are copper - that's good - and then ask if they should take off their shoes before entering your house to go and check out the system. Their objective id to usually sell you a water filter system or some such nonsense. And depending on my level of irritation, I respond - slow your roll, because the only way some uninvited person is getting into my home is if one of us is dead, and that one won't be me. Sometimes I get my iPhone out and take pictures of their ID - but these days as soon as I pull it out to indicate I need to do this for my records, they are usually running away to the next door before I can do that. If you ask for a brochure, they NEVER have one, or just down to their last copy, which they can't give away LOL. Sad, because it's mostly young people who need a job; it's the companies I hold responsible for setting up this kind of scummy sales system which preys on those who don't know better.

I honestly wonder, in this day and age, with so many rapes, stealing and murders happening right in peoples' homes, I'm going to invite some stranger into my home because they have a clipboard and a piece of paper on it with their picture? I guess, sadly, enough people actually do respond to this kind of tactic for them to continue doing it.

I had two men with a clipboard and plasticized ID tags from a local roofing company, knock on my door to do a "free inspection" and were able to give me a discount on roof repair. Today only! I told them I was going to have to call the company first before I spent any money, when they got in their car a left, rapidly. I did call the roofing company and informed them of the scam.

Our store has managed to stop quite a few people from either wiring money through money gram, or buying iTunes cards or other gaming cards in ridiculous amounts of money to send to someone. Usually the customer is on their cell phone while they're being instructed on what to do. We refuse to sell them the cards or send the money. We now get alerts on our cash registers when anyone buys an iTunes card to make sure we ask the customer if it's for them.

We did have one customer, an older gentleman, who was on his phone as he sent $2500 to someone. The clerk asked him repeatedly if he knew the person he was sending the money to. The man yelled at them to just do their job. Nothing we could do. Later in the evening, his daughter came in yelling at the staff because her dad got ripped off. What she failed to mention was her fathers care giver was standing 10 feet away while SHE ALLOWED him to send this money. It was her job to make sure he was being taken care of and she never stepped in once to help our staff stop him. We tried everything, she did nothing.

Now when people try to buy too many cards, or do a money transfer that is for an outrageous amount of money and the customer is talking to someone on the phone, we automatically call the city police and hand the phone to the customer. Most people don't believe us because they've been threatened with deportation. One guy was told the state police would come to their house. We live in Canada. We don't have state police....

A couple of years ago someone showed up at our house saying they had just finished a driveway sealing job nearby and had too much of the sealant so they would seal ours at a special "today only" price. My wife was home and called me at work to see what I thought, but I was in a meeting and couldn't take the call.

Immediately after the meeting I checked the message and called home. Since I hadn't taken the call and since the driveway did have some spots that looked bad, she decided to have them get started.

I was familiar with that type of scam, (they do a quick crappy job, using cheap, worthless "sealer", overcharge and disappear) and called home saying "go out there right now and tell them to get the he11 out of our yard."

When I got home I found that they had already rolling their "sealer" on the driveway and had already covered about 200 sq ft, and had even painted it right over a couple of weeds that had sprouted from a crack. Now two years later there is no evidence that anything was ever done.

Last week someone called me to say that they'd been checking my credit card history, and since I had such an exemplary record, they could arrange to have me qet a 0% rate on a card.

On earlier occasions, I've said that my credit cards are on 0% almost entirely now ... and how can they improve on that?

This time, I said that, since he'd been checking my credit card accounts ...

... how many credit cards do I have?

There was no reply, no click, just a bit of a pause ... and then dead air.

ole joyfuelled

It almost happened to a friends parents to the tune of $15K....the teller at the bank caught it.

linda_6, I think you can do that with Phonetrayfree.

For the employee that stopped the scam, I'd say that should require more than a call to the manager. That should go to the District Manager at least. I don't think they're allowed to accept a gratuity but I'd sure be looking to get them something, either from my pocket or from WM's.

My sister just about got scammed on the IRS thing a year or two ago. GF gave access to her computer to "Microsoft" just a few weeks ago. She didn't want to bother me when it popped up to call Microsoft. ARGH! Finally after an hour she started asking "Steve" how does she know HE'S not a scammer. And of course that didn't go over well. The light bulb flickered a little and she hung up and called me.

Suzanne, most of them aren't even in the country so they're not going to get caught in most cases. And to go through extradition and the like if someone does catch them isn't too likely.

It concerns me when I see people who think that being on the do not call list means they won't get these calls. I really fear that people so naive on the DNC list and how it works are just ripe for the picking. People REALLY need to educate themselves.

And going by the number they put on their CID is naive also. Research spoofing phone numbers sometime. The odds of them actually calling from that location are pretty slim.

People have been preying on the elderly and mentally unfirm for a long long time. Why would we think it has stopped?

Schools can't teach common sense. And they won't teach how to avoid getting scammed. And the reality is most religions compound the problem by preaching trust and faith in people. So they have to take a good portion of responsibility. I'd venture a guess that most who do get scammed are good church-goers. Be interesting to see some statistics on it.

cynic - Phonetrayfree is for calls from the computer. My calls are coming in to my landline phone. We're now getting calls from Irwin, PA. If no one answers they call back with a different number. I guess sooner or later it will stop.

This happened to my cousin. She claims she did not pay the $5000, but I'm betting she did. She does not own a computer or a smartphone and is very naive and also somewhat secretive. At age 84, she might as well paint a big target on her back. Her 60+ yr old daughter lives with her but works, and as I said, she's very secretive about her money, mainly because she has not used it wisely and is embarrassed.

Sometimes, one just can't save people from themselves....

Unfortunately none of the robo call stoppers work on real land lines. They are for voip. You can buy a device that supposedly works pretty well on Amazon but it is around a hundred dollars.

Here they seem to come by waves, none for a while then just get slammed with them.

Thanks, Suzanne. I'll look into this. We have Verizon. This is all for a landline. I don't give my cell number to anyone except my kids and so far two years after having the iPhone, never got any of those calls. It's odd, the donotcall allows the phone to ring one time and then it stops. But a very few can bypass like the chimney cleaning one the other day. This was a scam I later heard.

I have the Verizon Fios triple play package (data, tv, land line) and it works for me along with the caller ID that's included in the package. I'm like you - only my kids have my cell number.

Thanks Suzanne! I'm going to check into this.

It's awful that people are doing things like that. Maybe educate your older relatives about people in jail. The logical thing to do would be to call a bail bondsman, and they don't take gift cards.

Gee, I got the call from Microsoft the other day. Had fun with it! Just played really stupid and frustrated the man! LOL!

Suzanne ..We also have Fios triple play and when I told my husband he said we HAVE nonmorrobo as well as donotcall...so who knew?

I just found out we get call-forwarding, too! It's almost enough justification to pay the $168 bill for the $99 triple play package. Almost. (LOL)

We get a call every few wks from someone with a foreign accent wanting to fix our computer. I just tell them I don't have a computer. Doesn't stop them from calling again.

now if we could educate people about those televangelist, or as my dh calls them 'god squatters. My sons grandmother lived with him for 5 yrs when she moved she left behind unmailed checks for thousands of dollars that she did not have to give away.

"God squatters", I like that. Had neighbors who would tithe lots to the church they belonged to, but not have food for the kids. I fed the kids who were friends with my kids. Never turned them away, I knew they needed a good meal.

Sadly, this just happened to my 83 year old parents on Friday morning and they called to tell me about yesterday after the scammer tried a second attempt. I am so stunned that they fell for this scam and are now out $4000.

They were told to get $4000 in Visa gift cards immediately as their grandson "Tommy" was set to appear before a judge at 11:00am, so they went to Best Buy and purchased several cards. The "officer" that called even said that they may be questioned why they are buying so many cards, but to tell Best Buy it is for a friend you are helping out. The officer told them he would be calling them at 10:30am to get the card info. He called right on time and my mom read the numbers and pins on all the cards. She asked if she could talk to her grandson and they put "Tommy" on the phone who kept begging my parents not to call his wife or parents. Apparently he had been in jail for 2 days. My mom said it sounded just like "Tommy" and he even called her "Nana".

Second attempt happened yesterday morning when the officer called them again saying that "Tommy's" bail was increased and he needed another $4000. This time my dad wised up and asked to speak to "Tommy". It took about 10 minutes for "Tommy" to come to the phone and my dad asked what is your sister's name (he doesn't have a sister). Tommy kept laughing saying "oh come on you know what her name is, why are you playing these games with me." This went on for a few minutes and "Tommy" hung up. My dad then called the real "Tommy" who was home with his wife and quite stunned by what my dad proceeded to tell him.

It makes me sick as I write this, I can't believe my parents fell for it because they know about all these scams, we talk about them quite often and this incident is so not my parents.

FYI, "Tommy" is my son and has never been in trouble with the law.

My parents feel so embarrassed and upset about what happened, so there was no lecturing from me. I feel bad for them.