Driver turned away when he arrived to pick up victim
Staff members at Blue Ridge Assisted Living are being credited with stopping a scam that could have cost a resident a lot of money.
Fannin County Sheriff Dane Kirby said Deputy Sheriff Corporal Matthew Peardon was called to the Ballewtown Road facility shortly before noon, Thursday, February 18.
He had been dispatched to the report of a scam that had gotten as far as a car arriving to take an assisted living resident to the bank.
Kirby said staff members intervened when the car arrived, confronted the driver, and would not let the intended victim leave.
The scam began when the resident, an 81-year-old woman, received a call on her cell phone.
The caller, who identified himself as John Vinson and spoke with a Jamaican accent, said she had won $275,000. He said she would need to send money to him to claim her prize. The report of the incident did not indicate how much money he wanted.
The victim told the caller where she banked and that she would have to go there to get the money. However, she told him she could not leave Blue Ridge Assisted Living because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Soon, a car arrived and the person driving asked to pick up the intended victim. The driver left, having been confronted by staff members as soon as he arrived.
Kirby said the investigation showed the car was from a local transport company. It was determined the company was not involved in the scam.
The company owner reported receiving a call from a male subject, whose name he did not have, asking that someone be picked up at the facility and taken to the bank. The transport company owner said when they receive a call their normal policy is to send a driver to the address as requested. He “hardly ever” asks for a name, according to the report.
Kirby said this is another case of the countless scam artists that regularly prey on Fannin County citizens.
He said the calls “promise rewards that are too good to be true” and reminded citizens, “if it sounds too good to be true, it is.”
The callers often have heavy foreign accents, and the calls are being placed from overseas. While this makes the calls easy to identify as scams, catching the crooks is a different matter. “There is no means to track them down that we’ve been able to identify,” Kirby said.
The sheriff said, “The best thing to do is hang up.”