Scammers prey on senior citizens, Windber police chief says
WINDBER, Pa. – Senior citizens are being warned of what is called 'grandparent scams' after an 89-year-old Windber grandmother was scammed out of $8,400, authorities said.
Windber police Chief Andrew Frear told The Tribune-Democrat that seniors are being targeted by sophisticated fraudsters.
'This is going on daily, hourly,' Frear said. 'We've had multiple people fall for the scams.'
In the most recently incident, an 89-year-old grandmother was phoned by who she thought was her grandson. The 'grandson' said he had been in a two-vehicle crash in Johnstown and needed $8,400 for cash bail. The woman withdrew the money from the bank and gave the cash to a man who came to the door.
'In essence the money is gone,' Frear said. 'There's not much chance of recovery.'
One person has been arrested in the case and the investigation is continuing.
Another woman withdrew money from the bank to buy Visa gift cards after being contacted by who she thought was Publishers Clearing House promising her $18 million and a new car.
The woman sent the scammer the gift card numbers, he said.
'In these instances the people lost most of the money they had,' Frear said.
Publishers Clearing House does not telephone prize winners.
Seniors are often contacted via landline phones. Many seniors still rely heavily on landlines, making them an accessible target for fraudsters.
They can fall prey to the 'grandparent' scam, those impersonating relatives and legitimate organizations such as the Social Security Administration, the IRS, Medicare, charities and financial institutions.
Scammers speak with a sense urgency.
Seniors are encouraged to hang up if the caller is pressuring them to act immediately.
Residents need to talk with elderly family members about scam calls. They should also monitor parents' and grandparents' phone calls and use call blocking. Seniors receiving unwanted phone calls should hang up and call a family member or police.
'Call 911 and have the police come and talk to you,' Frear said. 'I just don't want to see people get scammed anymore.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
LA Democrat on Trump troop deployment: ‘He wants the show'
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) weighed in on the President Trump administration's deployment of Marines and National Guard soldiers to Los Angeles in light of the ongoing protests against raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying during a brief interview that the president 'wants the show.' Gomez, who represents California's 34th Congressional District, which includes several Los Angeles neighborhoods, was asked Wednesday if he expects the administration to pull back the National Guard and the Marines if the curfew, which Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) imposed for a small part of the city Tuesday night, 'seems to be working.' 'No, I think that Donald Trump is not doing it because there was ever an issue. He's doing it in order to have it on TV. He wants the show, of course, because that's — he likes to play the tough guy, but when it comes to taking on China, he always backs down,' Gomez said during an interview with NewsNation. 'When it comes to taking on the cartels, he backs down. So he wants to show that he's tough, and that's what it's always been about. It's about the show that people can see, even if it's limited,' the California Democrat told NewsNation's Joe Khalil. The administration has argued that Marines and the National Guard were deployed to help halt the protests after some protestors ransacked a federal building, while others set cars on fire. Bass, who has been under criticism from Trump and his allies over her handling of the protests, said during a Tuesday press conference that the curfew was instituted in a part of downtown Los Angeles to 'stop the vandalism, to stop the looting.' It started at 8 p.m. and end at 6 a.m. and is expected to last for several days. 'If you do not live or work in downtown L.A., avoid the area. Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew, and you will be prosecuted,' Bass said on Tuesday. Since then, law enforcement has arrested dozens of individuals. Gomez also said on Wednesday that he is still hearing concerns from people in the Los Angeles area over the ICE raids. 'I think it's because originally, remember, he said he promised everyone that he would go after people who are undocumented or in this country illegally, but were criminals. But now he's not doing that,' Gomez said. 'He's going after people who are showing up through their asylum cases at the ICE check ins at court, and they're getting arrested.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Bricks from Malaysia and New Jersey misrepresented amid LA unrest
"Soros funded organizations have ordered countless pallets of bricks to be placed near ICE facilities to be used by Democrat militants against ICE," says a June 7, 2025 Facebook post from David Harris Jr, a commentator supportive of US President Donald Trump whom AFP has previously fact-checked for spreading misinformation. The post references George Soros, a billionaire Democratic megadonor commonly targeted by right-wing and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In another post shared June 8 on X, American actor James Woods, who has also repeatedly peddled misinformation, shared a photo of a different stack of masonry. "It's not like these 'protests' are organized though…," he wrote. Similar claims citing either of the two images of bricks rocketed across social media platforms amid protests in Los Angeles that broke out June 6, triggered by immigration raids and arrests of what federal authorities say are undocumented migrants and gang members. Los Angeles officials have said the demonstrations were in large part peaceful but punctuated by scattered violence, including moments during which participants torched cars and law enforcement fired tear gas. The unrest continued to escalate over several days, with Trump clashing with California leaders as he bypassed the governor to deploy the state's National Guard to the city -- and active-duty US Marines. Other protests have also spread elsewhere in the country. Local news outlets have reported that some of the protesters in Los Angeles have thrown objects at officers and police cruisers, including rocks and fireworks. But the two widely shared photos showing stacks of bricks are unrelated. Reverse image searches traced the first image to a Malaysian hardware and construction dealer's page on Building Materials Online, a Malaysian online marketplace (archived here and here). The distributor, Ng Lian Seng Hardware Trading, is based in the town of Jinjang, northwest of Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur. Reached by AFP, a worker at the dealer said the store took the picture and uploaded it to Build Materials Online more than eight years ago. Google Street View imagery appears to show matching pallets of bricks piled up at the location (archived here). The second photo can be geolocated using Google Street View to West New York, New Jersey (archived here). A journalist with the fact-checking website Lead Stories visited the location June 9 and photographed additional construction equipment they found stationed beside the same heap of bricks (archived here). They also observed scaffolding set up along a nearby building, where contractors appeared to be working on the exterior. Fearmongering narratives about piles of bricks have become a common trope among accounts that traffic in misinformation since the nationwide protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, when images from construction sites were misrepresented in posts claiming authorities or left-wing groups were stashing bricks near planned demonstrations to foment violence. Similar claims have resurfaced around prominent court trials, trucker convoys and the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where protesters demonstrated against Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza. "These days, it feels like every time there's a protest, the old clickbaity 'pallets of bricks' hoax shows up right on cue," said the Social Media Lab, a research center at Toronto Metropolitan University, in a June 9 post on Bluesky (archived here and here). "You know the one, photos or videos of bricks supposedly left out to encourage rioting. It's catnip for right-wing agitators and grifters," it added. AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Los Angeles protests here, here and here.
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Appeals court denies Bob Menendez's bid to stay out of prison
A federal appeals court on Wednesday denied former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.)'s last-ditch bid to avoid reporting to prison while he appeals his corruption conviction. In a terse order that offered no reasoning, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled 2-1 against Menendez. Judge Alison Nathan, an appointee of former President Biden, would have ruled in the New Jersey Democrat's favor. The decision lays the groundwork for Menendez to take his ask to the Supreme Court. But the clock is ticking, as he's set to report to prison on Tuesday to begin his 11-year sentence for trading bribes for political favors and other crimes. Menendez was convicted last year on 16 corruption charges, including accepting luxurious bribes with his wife, Nadine Menendez, from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for his political clout and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt. It made him the first public official ever convicted of acting as a foreign agent while in office. Nadine Menendez was convicted on all counts she faced in April and is set to be sentenced on Sept. 11. She was accused of teaming up with her husband to accept the bribes, which included hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars and luxury cars, and conspiring to turn him into a foreign agent of Egypt. She was initially set to be tried alongside her husband, but her trial was delayed following her breast cancer diagnosis and surgery. Two of the businessmen were also convicted at trial and reported to prison last month. The third pleaded guilty before facing a jury. A federal judge in April denied Menendez's request for release and he took the ask to the federal appeals court last month. Meanwhile, Menendez's allies have reportedly made overtures to the White House for a pardon from President Trump, who has not openly ruled out clemency for the ex-senator. The former New Jersey Democrat himself has also publicly sought to land on the president's good side. After his sentencing, he exclaimed that 'President Trump was right,' deeming his own prosecution 'political' and 'corrupted to the core' while suggesting that Trump's was, as well. Earlier Wednesday, he made a winding post on X about 'how weaponization works, alleging similarities between his prosecution and the president's. The Hill requested comment from Menendez's lawyer.
