I’m going to cut this lady a little slack because she’s 86, but if the rest of you fall for this I may arrange to have you destroyed.
Police are searching for a suspect after an 86-year-old Guelph woman was scammed out of $5,900 by a person claiming to be a bank investigator.
Guelph police said the woman reported the scam Friday, saying she had received a call from someone claiming to be with her bank, and her cards had fraudulently been used in Alberta.
The person arranged to have the woman hand over her debit and credit cards so they could be destroyed.Police said on Thursday, at about 5 p.m., a man came to her home and was given an envelope with the cards inside. The cards were then used to make a number of purchases and withdrawals.
The standard advice applies here, of course. When you get a call like this, the only action you should take is to hang up and contact your bank directly to confirm whether or not there’s anything actually wrong with your accounts. But if somehow we’ve gone beyond that point, allow me to offer a little extra. Take a breath and ask yourself two questions.
- Do I own a pair of scissors capable of murdering a bank/credit card?
- Does using them myself to do exactly that make more sense than handing my intact cards to a stranger who is going to take them who knows where and do who knows what with them?
Yes, scams are getting more complex. But the human brain is also rather sophisticated, and in many cases it can still be used to thwart them. Please, use yours.