Fort Myers police are seeking assistance in identifying a man involved in a fraudulent scheme that targeted a woman in Boston. The victim was deceived into sending $11,000 to the man at a CVS in Fort Myers.<\/p>\n
The victim’s daughter intervened, preventing the scam from succeeding and ensuring the money was returned. However, the man reportedly attempted to collect the money under the alias “Joy Smith,” prompting police to search for him.<\/p>\n
The FBI calls it impersonation fraud. Scammers often pose as law enforcement or government officials, threatening potential victims with arrest for non-existent offenses, such as unpaid fines or missed jury duty, and demanding payment through cash, gift cards, or cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n
In this case, a family member’s awareness helped stop the fraud. Unfortunately, it’s not usually the case.<\/p>\n
It’s rare to recover money once it is sent in these kinds of scams, highlighting the dire consequences many victims face.<\/p>\n
Trish Routte of Crime Stoppers stressed the importance of identifying and apprehending the suspect quickly.<\/p>\n
“The sooner we can identify this guy and track him down and put him in jail, the less time he’s going to have to scam more victims,” said Routte. “People involved in this type of crime don’t just do one crime and then that’s it.”<\/p>\n
Authorities urge the public to examine the suspect’s images and report any information to Crime Stoppers. Reports can remain anonymous, and informants may be eligible for a reward.<\/p>\n
Officials also advise against sending money or gift cards if someone demands it over the phone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fort Myers police are seeking assistance in identifying a man involved in a fraudulent scheme that targeted a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[6647,25882,209,211,210,25879,2364,28,897,1387,1598,25880,25881],"class_list":["post-37882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-boston","tag-boston-fort-myers-police","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-confidence-tricks","tag-federal-bureau-of-investigation","tag-florida","tag-fort-myers","tag-fraud","tag-law-enforcement","tag-social-engineering","tag-spamming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}