Last Summer an intelligent local businessman got scammed out of $6000 through an elaborate online and phone scam. This is the second in our Scam Series, Read the first one here. Here’s what happened to JD Holmes of Fayetteville, and he wants everyone to know, so that it won’t happen to them, too.
JD, then an 82-year-old Georgia Tech grad, has owned and operated businesses locally for decades. He takes charge of his life and his money. One Saturday, he went to download an owner’s manual online when he got a notice, purportedly from Microsoft, that his security had been breached. It gave him a number to call.
They guy who answered the phone was well-spoken. He claimed to be Akshay Kumar, and gave a Microsoft ID number and a phone number. He said he was from India, but working with Microsoft in Seattle as a software engineer in the fraud department. “Akshay” shared his photo and bio.
JD, unsuspecting he was about to be duped, chatted about India. Akshay said he needed to do a scan and asked to remote into JD’s computer with AnyDesk. His professional-seeming “scan” showed 26 hackers.
Akshay suggested that JD check his bank accounts, “I logged into Heritage Bank, and we reviewed two of my companies. They both looked okay. Then we checked the third account. I noticed a $951.31 charge entitled “Pop-up charge from Ohio.” I told him that did not look right. He asked me if I was sure.
“He said, ‘Let me take care of it.’ A couple of minutes later he said, ‘Refresh your screen.’ When I did, the ‘Pop-up charge was gone, and replaced with a check in the amount of $951.31 that I HAD written to a vendor,” said JD. “That made me feel better that he was able to correct that.”
Here’s where JD really fell into the trap. “Next, he wrote on my screen a plan of action. He said we need to set a trap. We would create a dummy account to attract the hackers. When they tried to access it, he would trap and block them. That all made sense to me.”
JD went to his American Express account and bought two $999 eGift cards to be sent to his own email address. He was told to wait ten minutes and get back with Akshay. When JD returned, Akshay ran another one of his “scans” that showed a supposed 17 hackers. So Akshay convinced him to do it all again.
JD bought two more gift cards. This time Akshay said there were 7 hackers.
When Akshay sent him back for more gift cards, “American Express balked. They explained that a lot of scammers buy gift cards, and they needed to verify some things.”
Now JD was suspicious. He disconnected the phone with Akshay. He went to Microsoft’s website and accessed their security department. They asked JD if he felt he was being scammed. When he said yes, they gave him a form to fill out. JD gave all that info that Akshay had given him, including the employee number. JD specifically asked if Akshay was an employee of Microsoft.
“Ten minutes later, I received an email from Microsoft! They said they appreciated my getting with them. They assured me that Akshay was, indeed, a software engineer working in their fraud department.”
“About a minute later, I received a call from Akshay. He said Microsoft notified him that I had contacted them, but they only wanted one person working the project at a time.” With JD’s faith restored in Akshay, he bought two more gift cards from American Express. If you’ve been following the numbers, so far, that totals nearly $6000.
Akshay said there were two hackers left. So JD tried to buy another set of gift cards. American Express didn’t allow the purchase to go through. JD was antsy about this whole process. He called his bank, and they saw no activity on the accounts. Just to be safe, JD put a fraud notice out.
Then he called AmEx. They showed three sets of purchases, still pending. “I asked them to stop payment on those transactions. Their reply was that they could not stop them because it was a legal transaction between the merchant and me. And I had authorized the transactions.” JD had AmEx freeze his card and send him a new one.
In the meantime, his eGift cards arrived to his email from AmEx. “However, when I clicked on them, the money had already been spent!
“I was literally sick to my stomach, feeling violated and feeling like an idiot. I’m still out $6,000. An expensive lesson,” said JD.
JD wants to share his lessons from this scam. He says never allow ANYONE to remote into your computer that you have not already had a relationship with. “Apparently, I had not exited the remote soon enough, which is how he knew what I had told Microsoft. He could see my screen.” Akshay was likely able to send an email that looked like it was from Microsoft confirming his own identity.
JD also says to not buy eGift cards for anyone you do not know, even if you are sending to your own address.
Detective Michelle Taylor with the Peachtree City Criminal Investigations Bureau agrees with that advice. She says that no legitimate business, government or individual should ever require gift cards or eGift cards from you. And never take a picture of the back of your gift card and send it to someone. It’s a major scam red flag.
Scams are a big deal locally, Det. Taylor said, “Fraud is definitely our highest loss monetarily to victims.”
Detective Taylor thinks it’s possible to be too nice. Just as JD had intelligent conversation with Akshay, “With the older community, they are polite. They have been raised to be respectful and to do what they’re told, the right thing. And that’s what really they get preyed on in regards to that. And it’s such an unfortunate victimization tactic.”
Detective Taylor says the gift card scams are particularly hard, because there is no recovering that money. “You and I know gift cards are like cash, the credit cards and the banks aren’t going to refund you your money because you willingly bought it.”
Scammers, like Akshay in JD’s story, can be sophisticated. If you push back on their logic, Detective Taylor said, “They know how to get to someone. A lot of times I’m finding that when a victim pushes back a little bit, like, ‘well, wait, hang on a second.’ They start to get a little aggressive. And they try to go back and play into the weaknesses that they might have exploited in the first place.”
Det. Taylor invites people who think they are being scammed to call 911 and get the assistance of their local law enforcement officer. She recently had two people call 911 while on a call with a scammer, and they weren’t 100% sure. The officer helped them cut it off. “We would love to have that happen. Call us if you’re not sure, we will answer your questions,” she said.
JD reported his scam to the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department, but he’s a rarity. According to Det. Taylor the FBI says only one in 44 people over age 65 ever report their scam. She said an older generation may think, “This is embarrassing. If I finally get told that I’ve been scammed, my family’s going to find out. My kids are going to get mad.”
For online fraud, Det. Taylor says the best thing you can do is to report it, because the government may be able to track phone numbers, routing numbers, email addresses that you keep track of. She recommends the following FBI site to report online fraud: https://www.ic3.gov/
You might be able to be a part of taking down a crime syndicate. According to Det. Taylor, “They do a lot of data collection. Say, you only got scammed out of a hundred bucks, but the address or the phone number that you got scammed from matches to 50 other cases across the United States. They’re going to look at that and go, now we’ve got something across state lines. We can jump in and start helping. They need something that brings them into an investigation that gives them jurisdiction. You might be the first person to report it, but 30 people down the road, it finally ties into some bigger enterprise.”
This is so sad. Thank you for reporting on these scams.