Florida congresswoman stole $5M in FEMA funds, used money for her campaign: DOJ <\/a><\/p>\n\u201cAt first it made my heart drop\u2026 and once I found out what was happening, it made me furious,\u201d said Charlie Davis.<\/p>\n
Davis told 8 On Your Side the criminal instructed him to walk into the bank and make the transaction while leaving his cell phone on and connected to the call, before sending a picture of the receipt.<\/p>\n
Bank of America staff at the Tampa location quickly realized the actions as a commonly used scheme and cancelled the potential money wire.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so close to losing so much,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n
The Pinellas County Sheriff\u2019s Office said that different types of these schemes are reported daily and vary in nature. Oftentimes they target the vulnerable, elderly, and those with a lack of knowledge about technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cPhone scams are heartless and they are never ending. If they can get $100 from you, then they\u2019re going to try for $500. And if they can get $500, they can try for $1,000. So there really is no end until you put an end to it,\u201d said Deputy Geoff Moore, with the Pinellas County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
The sheriff\u2019s office recommends all victims of these crimes to report them to law enforcement\u2019s financial crimes division.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) \u2014 A Tampa family nearly lost their retirement savings after a fraud scheme that happened…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[33968,33972,33967,33969,33970,4448,8369,135,137,33971,136],"class_list":["post-54332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-bank-of-america","tag-banking-information","tag-charlie-davis","tag-davis-family","tag-fraud-scheme","tag-pinellas-county-sheriffs-office","tag-retirement-savings","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-location","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54332","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=54332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}