Not quite the same thing but. Received an E-mail from Pay Pal saying someone charged 632.00 to my account. They wanted my card number to make sure they had the right card number. The funny part is that I don't have a pay pal account and never did. Where they got the E-mail address from I have no idea. The email looked just like pay pals letter head would look.

I got a rash of emails not too long ago wanting to get me to pay up my EZ-pass account or my driver's license and registration would get suspended.

I've never had an EZ-pass , ever.

So here's the deal , but first a disclaimer , this happened to my boss and not me , so I'm working off second hand information and probably won't be able answer all questions , but I'll tell ya what I can.

My boss had made a $25 one time donation to some type of veterans organization. My boss is a decent charitable person and a Navy vet. He found out that somehow that donation was changed to a $200 month on auto payment instead of a $25 one time deal. He contacted them to get it straightened out. What he didn't know was he had contacted the scammers. They acted all concerned and wanted to fix it. Then they directed him to a website to fix it. Some real shady crap started then. In the fake process of straightening it out , magically the donation went to $200,000
Ooops big mistake they claimed. In order to fix that they got him to click on a link or give access to my bosses computer.

Big , big mistake.

They then took over his PC. This is a business computer. Next thing he knows they are showing him his bank account and right in front of his eyes , he sees the bank account cleaned out. They did a fake screenshot to make him think it had already occurred. Then it got nasty and turned into blackmail for every bank account and control of his PC.

They had him drive to one branch of his bank to withdraw $40k in cash with further instructions to follow. Had him on his cell phone the whole time uninterrupted so he couldn't call 911.

My boss grabbed me and without talking or the scammer would know I was there to help , got me to call police. He then had to go to his bank or the scammer said things would get worse if he didn't comply. So he had to drive with his cell phone on while driving so the scammer knew he couldn't contact the police.
I got smart and called his bank to warn them what was going on. My boss had written a note just before he walked into the bank that said " I am being scammed " but the bank was already prepared as I had called them.

The bank reacted quickly and got everything locked down before any money got transferred.

My boss now has all new accounts at the bank. The bank told him they had seen this before at that branch because I guess there is a business right next door with one of those Bitcoin ATM thingy that you can buy Bitcoin. That was probably the next step to convert the money into untraceable Bitcoin.

My boss bought a new PC at Costco as his was locked up and probably infected. He had backups on a separate drive and decided it was about time to get a new PC as having the geek squad fix his old one would have cost 2/3 the price of a new PC.

So he is checking every account - investment - etc to make sure it is not affected. Changing all his passwords too.

Considering we know one of the scammers may have waiting outside the bank to escort him to the Bitcoin ATM , we went into defcon 2 mode and armed ourselves as the scammer put a huge amount of time into these things and would be real ticked off that it got stopped and I'm quite sure they knew our location and might try something stupid. I read online that 50% scam victims get scammed again from the same scammers. There is a lot of work setting up these scams maybe even as much as 100 man-hours to get all the information they need to pull this off. They don't give up easy and will try again or do something stupid and you need protection. Police were almost worthless.

That’s the script of The Beekeeper movie

That’s the script of The Beekeeper movie

I always carry at work. In fact I've had to use it twice in the last 2 weeks.

If something is bad enough to carry a handgun then a shotgun is also warranted.

So have you gone through two horses then?

^THIS^

Handguns are for carry when you don't expect to need a gun. If you expect to need one you grab a long gun.

You really think there's a great enough threat that you need to hide a shotgun at work?

I really wish President Trump would have all the scam centers in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh destroyed by zone strikes during the busiest times of day there. In 2024 they scammed Americans out of over 12.5 billion dollars. The elderly are the favorite targets of the foreign scammers.

Keith