Dalinda Carpenter, a widowed senior citizen living in Standish, recently fell victim to a scam that cost her $14,000.
Carpenter, who lives on Social Security, said that in early July, she began receiving messages on her phone about her Apple Pay account being charged, which she initially ignored as she did not have an Apple Pay account. Each of the messages, she said, originated from a number connected to Apple.com.
However, after a week of receiving the messages, she decided to call the listed number. When she called the number, she claimed that a man with an accent answered and took control of her phone, showing her to a list of people that had allegedly hacked her account.
The man, Carpenter said, promised that he would help her block the alleged hackers, telling her that they were trying to get into her savings account, and she had to transfer money to her checking account through Western Union. He said that, when the hackers came to pick up the funds, they would be arrested, and started giving her the names of people to send $1,500 to.
After the third such transfer, Carpenter said that she was not comfortable with the situation, and the man, whom she characterized in a police report as being “assertive and controlling”, repeatedly told her not to hang up. Ultimately, the scam, which saw nine transfers of more than $1,500 each from Carpenter’s account between July 8 and July 14, ended up costing her a total of $14,003.
Carpenter explained that this was not her first time dealing with scams, citing one example of a time when she had received a call from a man who had told her to drive to an ATM in Westbrook that would change her money to Bitcoin. In this situation, she went to Norway Savings Bank, where the branch manager told her that, if the man called her number again, they would report it to the FBI.
Following the most recent scam, Carpenter said that she pursued legal action through the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department, and called Southern Maine Agency on Aging. Through the latter, she connected with a lawyer who referred her to several different places, but ultimately reached a dead end.
Carpenter said the scam has left her in financial ruin, responsible for paying back more than $14,000, falling two months behind on car payments, and having had to cancel plans for household repairs and other necessities.
“Once you fall for it, you’re done, you’re fried,” said Carpenter, who regretted being so gullible as to fall for the scam, and wondered about the countless other vulnerable seniors in the modern world.
