South Carolina Women Lose $840K & $130K to Scammers Posing as FBI & CIA Agents
Two women from Beaufort County, SC become victims to a scam with fake agents that is targeting many Americans.
Beaufort County, SC Woman Loses Big Money in Scam to ‘Fake FBI’ agent
The Island Packet reported that a 77-year-old woman called Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office to report a scam on 12 September 2022.
She told the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office that the scam that started in March 2022.
The scammers first contacted her posing as a representative from the VISA Fraud Department. They claimed that there was a fraud purchase charged to her account from Best Buy. The scammer told her that the police would be contacting her next.
The next scammer that contacted her was not the police, but an individual claiming to be an FBI agent. The agent told her that her “identity had been compromised,” but not to worry because he would “protect her assets.” (Source: The Island Packet, Sanchez)
As with all scams, the instructions given to this woman to protect her assets do not make sense, and no agency would ever ask a person to pay them to protect their personal assets.
The woman was contacted by various scammers posing as FBI agents, asking her to liquidate her assets (i.e. withdraw cash from her accounts) and send the cash to them.
She was told to buy gold, and a courier from the District Attorney’s office Savannah, Georgia would pick up the gold. This was all a lie, obviously. She never met the mysterious courier that picked up the gold from her home.
This scam continued on for six months until she decided to contact the real FBI, and they instructed her to contact her local police.
The unnamed woman lost a total of $840,457 in this scam. (Source: The Island Packet, Sanchez)
The next story shares some common similarities to this incident. Another fake agent requests another woman to withdraw money from her bank.
