Full Notification

(French Camp, CA) The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office is alerting the public about Scammers calling our elderly and attempting to steal their money.
The Grandparent Scam is so simple and so devious because it uses one of the elderly’s most reliable assets, their hearts.
Scammers will place a call to an older person and when the he or she picks up, the scammer will say something along the lines of: “Hi Grandma or Grandpa, do you know who this is?” When the unsuspecting grandparent guesses the name of the grandchild the scammer most sounds like, the scammer has established a fake identity without having done any background research.
Once “in,” the fake grandchild will usually ask for money to solve some unexpected financial problem (overdue rent, payment for car repairs, etc.), to be paid via Western Union or MoneyGram, which doesn’t always require identification to collect.
At the same time, the scam artist will beg the grandparent “please don’t tell my parents, they would kill me.”
While the sums from such a scam are likely to be in the hundreds, the very fact that no research is needed makes this a scam that can be perpetrated over and over at very little cost to the scammer. So please, help take care of our elderly by spreading the word.