Recently I received a phone call, a plaintive youthful male voice saying, “Grandma?”
The voice, which sounded very like my grandson, went on to tell a doleful tale of having gone to Canada with a group of friends to the funeral of another friend who had died in a car crash.
While there, the car he was traveling in was pulled over for speeding. Suddenly, the cop made them all get out, and lo, he discovered a bag of cocaine.
The voice said he calling from a holding cell in the Woolridge, Ontario, police department. He did not want me to tell his parents, he would prefer to tell them himself when he got home. Dutifully, I promised I would not. They were letting him call a person he could trust, he said, so he thought of Grandma Cameron. If he could get bail money quickly, he could make a court appearance the next morning, and still make his flight home.
Are you seeing where this is going? Yep, please help him out with the bail, don’t tell Mom and Dad, and here is Sgt. John Nash with the details.
Sgt. Nash sounded affable, definite Canadian accent, asked how to spell the kid’s last name, said there might be a night court opening, since he was not being held culpable. Bail had been set at $2650. I could send it via Western Union, but, and here’s the kicker, no Canadian bail bondsman could send it on such short notice, but they had a California colleague who could.
What can I say? Such an obvious flimflam when you look at it. But the idea: “Grandson, Jail, Canada, Bail Money…”
We did not have the amount in our ready checking account. We managed to get our broker’s office to send it to our local bank account. We scurried down to the bank, withdrew it in cash, then on to the Western Union office in our local Hannaford’s.
Sgt. Nash had asked me to call him back when this had been done, and gave me the Woolridge, Ontario, P.D number. Later, my husband checked the area code, which was actually for Quebec Province. Apparently there is no such town as Woolridge in Ontario.
Belatedly, I got to thinking, why a California bail bondsman for a Canadian court case? I decided to call the bondsman direct, Nicole L. Ruiz, of Oceanside, if anyone is taking notes, but could not get on long distance directory assistance, a FairPoint vs. Tidewater problem, I guess.
So I decided to call my sister in California, ask her to find me the number.
Her first response to my call, “Sounds like the classic Grandmother Scam to me.”
Instantly, the spell was broken. Never mind promises, I called my daughter. She said her son had just come home from his middle school.
Then, an irritated call from Sgt. Nash: Western Union in California was blocking the transfer, could I please get Western Union to unblock it, or else my grandson would have to spend as long as 72 hours in prison.
We raced down to Hannaford’s, got the cash refunded, next day got it back into our local account, minus Western Union’s service fee, which was hefty, but considering that they saved our necks, worth every penny.
Ordinarily, I am the most skeptical of persons. How is it that I could be seduced by a voice over a telephone into parting with a large block of cash cast, essentially, into the wind? I have no excuse, no explanation, but I have been told by people I know that they, too, have fallen for some of the most glaring fabrications.
Old women are particularly susceptible. The people behind scams like this know it and know how to play it. If at any time I had hesitated, or pointed out a flaw in their story, I am sure they would have hung up the phone immediately, and moved on to the next sucker.
So here are a couple pieces of after-the-fact advice: First, this was a cold call. They did not know my grandson’s name; I automatically gave it to them. I could have stopped this at the start by not naming him.
Second, do not make a promise to keep the dilemma secret from parents. If you do, in a soft moment, feel free to break it. Third, one way to scout such calls out is to ask a trick question, which only your kin would know: the name of a best friend, for instance, if you know it.
Meanwhile, although still solvent, I creep around feeling like a pariah, mortified that I should have been so gullible, angry that I should have been so gullible. But I cannot get out of my head the completely false picture of my grandson behind the bars of a phoney police holding cell in Canada.
We were fortunate in this instance. I am writing this out at length in the hope it will help others with distant loved ones they don’t hear from that often. Be suspicious. Make sure you know who you are talking to.
(Jo Cameron is the Edgecomb correspondent for The Lincoln County News.)
