An 80-year-old Bakersfield woman said she was scammed out of thousands of dollars after callers convinced her to empty most of her bank account, leaving her without enough money for surgeries.<\/p>\n
The woman, who did not want to be named, said the scammers contacted her by phone and claimed to be investigators looking into alleged criminal activity at her local bank branch. She said they told her that if she made a transaction into a \u201cdummy account,\u201d she would receive a free subscription to LifeLock in return.<\/p>\n
She said she went into the bank while still on the phone with the scammers and completed the transaction into an account the scammers had set up. Now, she said she is upset bank employees did not stop the transaction or ask questions before she transferred the money. She said she has been a customer of the bank for more than 50 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sat and cried. I\u2019m not the type to sit and cry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The woman also questioned why her situation did not raise concerns at the bank. \u201cWhen you\u2019re 80 years old and you\u2019re walking with a cane and you\u2019re limping along and you\u2019re not smiling because you\u2019re being hacked and they\u2019re listening to you, wouldn\u2019t that be a little bit suspicious?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Kern County Sheriff\u2019s Office is investigating. The agency said people should hang up on suspicious phone calls or say they want to confirm with the Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is a sense of urgency, they don\u2019t want to let you off the phone, that\u2019s a red flag,\u201d said Lori with the Kern County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Officials said criminals tend to target the elderly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of our elderly community and then our 18 year olds, they\u2019re just more concerned about the consequences being presented to them from the scammer that they become so scared they comply,\u201d Lori said.<\/p>\n
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The Kern County Sheriff\u2019s Office said there have been scams involving bank employees in the past. Anyone with information about this case or others can call KCSO at 661-861-3110.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An 80-year-old Bakersfield woman said she was scammed out of thousands of dollars after callers convinced her to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-273469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}