A 76-year-old Arizona widow is “devastated” after losing her life savings to scammers who set a trap for her over the phone last month.
Susan Guthrie, 76, was scammed by fraudsters who posed as Microsoft employees and convinced her to deposit her savings into their account, SWNS reports.
They convinced her that her computer had been hacked and that if she did not transfer the money, it might be stolen.
“The scammers seemed credible to me and assured me that they would take care of the problem,” laments Ms. Guthrie.
“Once I found out the truth, I was devastated. I felt really stupid,” she said.
Susan Guthrie was thus robbed of her life savings, i.e. $25,000 ($33,000 CAN), reports the Daily Mail.
Her daughter, Sarah-Lynn Guthrie, says the scammers accessed her mother’s computer on February 5 after she clicked on a pop-up window that gave her a fake Microsoft number.
“What’s really unhealthy is that she was telling the scammers, ‘Why would anyone rob me, I’m just a poor, lonely little old lady,’ and they had empathy for her,” Sarah-Lynn said.
Ms. Guthrie told the Arizona Republic that the scammers treated her kindly.
“That $25,000 was all she had left to get out of trouble,” Sarah-Lynn said.
“My parents lost everything in the crash of 2008 and now she is stuck in a tiny apartment, which she can barely afford with her social security,” she adds.
Sarah-Lynn created a GoFundMe site for her mother and was quickly able to raise more than $27,700 ($36,000 CAD)
“It’s incredible how quickly people mobilized. Without that, my mother would be lost and I would have to take care of her,” she rejoices.
She nevertheless calls for vigilance; It is important to inform vulnerable loved ones of the possibilities of such telephone or computer scams.
