A rash of recent cybercrimes and identify theft cases has prompted Southold Town police to warn and educate the community, particularly older residents, about how to spot an online or phone scam before it’s too late.
Just this month, there have been at least seven attempts — two of them successful — to steal victims’ savings through elaborate cons.
Financial exploitation accounts for half of all scams targeting the elderly in New York State, Jennifer Milito, a Suffolk County assistant district attorney, said at a forum last year.
Authorities say that seniors are frequently targeted because they often have a steady, predictable income stream from either Social Security or a pension. Officials are warning retired North Forkers to be wary of anyone — online or on the phone — who asks that they pay or move money through wire transfers, cash, gift cards or cryptocurrency. They also advise residents to be cautious of anyone who puts pressure on them to act immediately.
Southold Police Chief Steve Grattan said in an interview last week that the “best thing we can do is get the word out that there’s a possibility [a resident] is being scammed.
“We tell people to chronicle everything, and if you’re wary, call us — we have no problem sending somebody over.”
The non-emergency number for the Southold Police Department is 631-765-2600.
One recent Southold victim got a malware pop-up while browsing the internet, purportedly from Microsoft. It claimed there had been unauthorized withdrawals from the person’s Capital One bank account and directed them to call a specific phone number, Chief Grattan said. When the victim called the number, they were “switched over” to an alleged Capital One representative, who said that “in order to stop these unauthorized withdrawals, go to the bank and remove all of the money from the account,” according to the chief.
The scammer then told the victim that the only way the theft can be stopped is to move the money into an encrypted account.
The victim emptied the account of $15,000 and brought the cash home. The scammer then asked for the person’s home address and said they would send a courier to pick up the money.
“The representative said, ‘We’re going to send a courier over with a secret password,’ ” Chief Grattan said. “ ‘If the courier tells you the right password, then that’s the right person.’”
In a second incident this month, an email purportedly from Venmo alerted a Southold resident to allegedly unauthorized withdrawals from their bank account and directed the victim to call a given number to clear things up.
The person called the number and gave the con artist remote access to their computer, including online bank accounts — and the scammer transferred nearly $20,000 from one of the victim’s accounts to another.
According to Chief Grattan, the thief then told the victim, “We made a mistake and transferred $20,000 into your account. That’s our fault.”
The person was instructed to withdrawn $19,700 from that account and a courier would be sent to their home to pick it up. Unfortunately, the victim looked at only the one online account, so the deposit for $19,700 did, in fact, appear to a be a bank error.
A “courier” arrived, collected the cash, and disappeared.
In both instances, the victims were able to provide only a basic description of the courier — in one case because the man was wearing an N95 mask — and no descriptions of their vehicles. The chief said those investigations are ongoing.
At least four other incidents were reported this month in which Southold residents caught on during the scam and hung up before reporting the incidents to the police.
He said there had been another scam earlier this year in which a courier was sent to a Southold resident to pick up money — and did.
“But these two, back-to-back, in such a close period of time, made me wonder if we’re going to start seeing more and more of these attempts,” the chief said. “$35,000 removed from residents just this month is really what prompted me to send out a press release.”
In a third recent incident, a Southold man was making an online purchase when a pop-up ad asked if he’d like to donate 3% of the purchase price to impoverished children. When he clicked on the link, he was contacted by someone purporting to be a PayPal representative. The person told the man his bank account had been used to purchase a large amount of Bitcoin, and directed him to go to the nearest Bitcoin machine. (There’s one at the Walgreens in Mattituck, Chief Grattan said.) The man inserted his bank card into the machine, and later learned that nearly $5,000 was stolen from that account. The scammer kept the man on the phone, and told him that the first attempt hadn’t worked, and he should try another bank card. He did, and later realized that $500 had been taken out of that account, according to police.
In other cases , a person pretending to be a federal agent contacted a Southold resident asking for personal information, and an elderly woman got a call purporting to be from her grandson, who said he was being held against his will and needed money to get free. Both residents recognized a scam and hung up before contacting police.
“These actors are good,” Chief Grattan said of the con artists. “They can be very convincing.”
Many successful scams are never reported to police, however, because the victims are too embarrassed to admit to authorities they were duped, he said.
Only about one in every two dozen cases is reported, according to the National Elder Abuse Incident Study, and the large majority of victims are women over age 60.
Still, some progress is being made in combating the cybercrime wave. With online scams occurring nationwide, the chief said, bank “tellers are getting in tune to this and trying to warn these potential victims that they could be the victim of a scam if they’re taking out such large sums of money.”
He also urged residents to “try not to be persuaded by pressure — that’s one of the tactics these scammers use, telling you that you would have to act immediately.
“No legitimate, honest business is ever going to force somebody to take action immediately, or to pay or give personal information, or demand it and try and force you to give it,”the chief said. “These are the messages we’re trying to convey.”
“Don’t pay anything with crypto or cash or gift cards,” he added. “No legitimate organization is going to ask for that.”