‘Looked to my side and there is a police officer’: Ont. woman loses $4.5K to scam despite cop’s warning

Alana Everson reports on a woman who was scammed out of $4,500 after a caller posing as her bank told her to withdraw cash and deposit it into a Bitcoin machine

A senior citizen in the Greater Sudbury, Ont., community of Lively is sharing her story about being the victim of a scam.

In what has become a common approach, a scammer convinced Maureen Potter that her identity had been compromised, leading to a sequence of events that left the 66-year-old woman $4,500 poorer.

It all began on Nov. 12. Potter was home with her cat, Mustang, when she received a troubling phone call.

“I was told it was the TD Bank and that my accounts had been hacked,” she said.

“’Have you spent $5,000 on this, $2,000 on this?’ I said, ‘No.’ He says, ‘We have a Maureen Potter opening up bank accounts at the Bank of Montreal, the Royal Bank, the CIBC.’ I said, ‘It’s not me.’”

The caller — identifying himself as ‘David’ — then told her she would be transferred to the fraud department, and she was instructed to withdraw $4,500 from her bank account. She walked to the bank with the fraud artist still on the line.

“’If they say anything, you tell them it’s for Christmas presents,’” Potter recalled. “And I do what he says.”

She was then instructed to go to an identification machine and deposit the money to verify her identity. The closest was a variety store in Copper Cliff. Potter doesn’t drive, so she went by taxi.

“He sent me a bar code that has the Ministry of the Attorney General and the TD Bank (logo),” she said.

“Again, I still think this is valid. I start to go to the machine and the store owner comes out and says, ‘Stop! Stop! Stop! Fraud! Fraud! Fraud! I am going to call the police.’ And now my heart is beating, I am thinking, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, they are going to call the police.’”

Potter fled the store in the taxi before police arrived, but the store owner told police the name of the taxi company. The scammer then told her to go to another convenience store with an ATM identification machine, where she began depositing her money.

“And I looked to my side and there is a police officer there,” Potter said.

‘Do it! Do it!’

“He goes, ‘Stop, ma’am! Stop! Stop! What you are doing is fraud — I am telling you right now, ma’am, this is fraud.’ And I am so in a tizzy at this point, I don’t listen to the police officer because I have David saying, ‘Do it! Do it!’”

Finally, she said the police officer then explained to her what had just happened.

“I had just deposited $4,500 into a bitcoin machine that is going into the scammer’s wallet,” Potter said.

The senior said she’s humiliated that she fell for the scam, but is sharing her story anyway to make others aware. Potter also praised Sudbury police for their response.

In an email, Greater Sudbury Police said legitimate businesses will never ask you to pay fees using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency or gift cards.

“If you’re being pressured to make a payment, it’s a scam,” police said.

“Hang up, stop the transaction and report it immediately. We would like to thank the community member who intervened and contacted police.”

For her part, Potter said she is trying to recover the money, but hasn’t had any luck yet on that front.