Grandma Keeps Buying $2K In Retail Store Gift Certificates Until Cab Driver Recognizes She's Being Scammed

May 16, 2020 by apost team

While working as a cab driver back in 2019, Richard Spencer picked up an 87-year-old woman who was on her way to the store to buy a $2000 giftcard. Spencer suspected the woman might be being scammed, so he drove her to the police station in Quincy, MA. It turns out the cab driver was right — it was a textbook example of a "Grandparent Scam."

While many people are well aware of scammers and know to avoid them, the elderly are often targeted because they may not realize what is going on. This was the case when an 87-year-old woman called for a cab. She told the driver who showed up that she had to get to the department store as soon as possible. She needed to purchase some gift cards when she got there, Boston 25 News reported in 2019.

She told the driver what had happened on the way there. Earlier in the day, she received a phone call from someone she believed to be her grandson. The local news outlet reports that the man tricked her into thinking he had been involved in a vehicle accident. He told her that in order to keep out of jail, he needed her to go to the store and purchase gift cards.

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Of course, the worried grandmother called a cab to go pick up the cards. She was told to call her “grandson” after she bought the cards in order to relay the personal pin numbers. 

After explaining her story to Richard Spencer, the cab driver, he realized that he had heard the story just that morning. Another driver had told him that this same woman had been in his cab earlier for exactly the same reason. He had taken her to purchase thousands of dollars in gift cards at their local department store, Boston 25 News detailed.

Richard immediately knew she was being targeted. He could have taken her to the store and dropped her off, but he knew that he had to take action to stop her from losing more money.

He drove her to the police station instead. In doing so, the policemen were able to crack the case. In the end, Richard was able to prevent this sweet old lady from losing even more money to a terrible scammer.

 We hope there are more people out there willing to take action when they see someone being scammed!

What did you think of Richard's actions? Do you know anyone who was scammed out of cash? Leave us a comment and then pass this on to warn others!