Scammers Use Family Connections
It started with a phone call.
The Lexington couple who answered heard a voice on the phone identifying himself as Gary Daniel, an officer with the Lexington Police Department, providing a badge number, before telling them that their daughter was in a car accident in which a pregnant woman in the other car was injured.
Then a second phone call.
This one from an attorney, Paul Spencer, who claimed to be with local law firm Spencer & Taylor. He said the couple in the other car is pressing charges and their daughter’s bail is being set at $16,000, adding that the pregnant woman may lose her baby.
Then a third call. This one from a voice they recognized as their daughter’s, crying hysterically and repeatedly saying that she is sorry.
Only it wasn’t their daughter. And by the time the couple realized that, they had already sent the $16,000 and had been ready to send another $30,000 victims of a phone scam.
The phone scam was just one of three such recent incidents being investigated by the Lexington Police Department, scams that involved multiple calls, and, in one case, the use of AI technology to simulate voices.
Persistent Callers
In an anonymous statement, the Lexington couple provided The News-Gazette with details of what happened to them, which were confirmed by the Lexington Police Department.
The story that they were told from “Officer Daniel” was that their daughter had been driving 60 miles per hour in a 40 mile per hour zone and had rear-ended a car being driven by a pregnant woman after she had “leaned over, looking for a fallen object.” After asking for the $16,000 in bail money, “Spencer” told the couple that their daughter was in a neck collar with a broken nose and had stitches in her lip.
After getting the $16,000 from the bank for the bail money, the couple was told by “Spencer” to put it into an envelope and then into a box and to seal it, and that a driver would be coming to pick up the unmarked box. If asked, they were instructed to say that the box contained “legal documents.”
A few hours later, a woman in newer model red Cadillac SUV, who identified herself as Shannon, arrived to pick up the package and leaves. “Paul Spencer,” the attorney, contacted them several times while they were waiting for the driver and said he was going before the judge to facilitate their daughter’s release from jail. Later, after they had turned the package containing the supposed bail money over to Shannon, “Spencer” called back and informed the couple that a physician had determined that the fetus “will not survive” and that their daughter’s bail had been revoked.
The couple then received a second call from their “daughter” who they said was “weeping so hysterically as to be incoherent,” and they tried to calm her down and “reassure her of our unconditional love and support.”
Later in the day, the couple got another call from “Spencer,” who told them that the family of the woman their daughter allegedly had rear-ended had agreed to a settlement of $50,000, plus medical expenses for the mother and the funeral expenses for the baby. The couple asked “Spencer” what amount would make “a reasonable counter offer” and he said $30,000.
The couple went back to CornerStone Bank in Lexington to get the money, where the teller alerted them to the possible scam and informed bank officials. The couple was encouraged to call their daughter, who confirmed that she was uninjured and that she had been at work all day. Further calls confirmed that the Spencer associated with the local Spencer & Taylor firm – Tommy Spencer, not Paul – had died in 2018.
“I’m thankful that our staff knows our customers well enough to know when something seems to be off,” Steve Grist, president and CEO of CornerStone Bank, told The News-Gazette. “The teller was able to recognize that this wasn’t a typical transaction … We’re glad we were able to prevent them from losing any more money.”
The couple reported the scam to the Lexington Police Department, who staked out the couple’s residence as they called “Paul Spencer” back to tell him the money was ready to be picked up. “Spencer” called back one more time about an hour later to say it would be another “45 minutes to an hour” before a driver could arrive to pick up the money. No driver ever arrived to pick up the money.
“We share our story to alert [people] to how we all have a tendency to lose good judgment when suddenly subjected to intense emotional stress,” the couple said at the conclusion of their statement. “The very realistic voice recordings of our daughter’s uncontrollable sobbing blinded us to many subtle clues that should have stopped us before handing over the money.” -In addition to this case, Lexington Police Department is also investigating other reports of scams where the scammer presented themselves as an attorney for a family member in legal trouble in order to exploit large sums of money.
In one case, the victim received multiple calls over several days, claiming that their nephew had rearended an elderly woman who had to be hospitalized. The scammers asked for $14,000 to be sent to an address in New York via FedEx. After realizing the scam, they reported it to the Lexington Police Department who were able to work with FedEx and police in New York to intercept the truck before it reached the delivery address and get the money back.
In a second case, which occurred in January, the victim, who lives in Alleghany County, was targeted over multiple calls, again by someone claiming to be an attorney representing their nephew, claiming he was in jail after he had rear-ended a pregnant driver in Florida, causing her to miscarry.
The scammer had her send $30,000 from Alleghany County, then called again to get an additional $30,000, this time having the victim meet a driver at the Hampton Inn at Col Alto in Lexington to deliver the money. The driver they met turned out to not be the scammer, but a Lyft driver the scammer hired to act as a courier. Shannon, the woman in the red SUV in the other case, was an Uber driver hired for the same purpose, the goal being to provide an extra layer of separation between the victim and the scammer, making it more difficult to identify who is behind it.
‘Take Those Extra Steps’
Lexington Police Chief Justin Doll, along with investigators Capt. Jess Burks and Sgt. Harlie Curry who are investigating these cases, told The News-Gazette that this type of scam isn’t new.
Burks recalled talking to a woman years ago who had been preyed on by a scammer with a similar story – the caller claimed to be a lawyer representing their son who was in some sort of legal trouble – and noted that scams like this tend to “ebb and flow,” with scammers using one technique until people start to catch on to it and then switching to another.
One of the things that is new in this recent round of reported scams is the use of some sort of generative AI technology to recreate the family member’s voice, as in the case of the couple’s daughter. Doll said that he wasn’t surprised to learn that AI was being used in this way, “given what AI is being used for these days.”
Chief Doll, Capt. Burks and Sgt. Curry said they also regularly receive reports of a variety of scams, from people claiming to be law enforcement and trying to get people to use gift cards to pay to get out of a warrant for their arrest to people claiming to be from a utility company demanding payment for an outstanding bill.
“No one legitimate is ever going to call and demand your credit card information or demand some kind of payment out of the blue,” Doll said. “That doesn’t ever happen.” He further emphasized that “law enforcement never demands money in that way, ever.”
One of the hallmarks of all of these kinds of scams is that the scammers create a sense of urgency in an effort to prevent the people they target from calling anyone else, such as their loved ones to confirm if they’re in trouble or the police to confirm the identity of the person claiming to be the police officer with the warrant.
Doll encouraged people to reach out to law enforcement if they’re unsure of the legitimacy of a call, even if it turns out to not be a scam.
“I would rather field a half-dozen calls like that every day than have one more person get scammed for a big chunk of cash,” he said.
The main thing he hopes to emphasize when dealing with scam calls is to not engage with them if possible, to take a moment to make a call to confirm the legitimacy of any such claims and to generally be careful about what information you put online.
“I’m not sure that there’s much you can do to keep yourself from being targeted in this information age, to be honest,” he said. “All of us have information out there. I think the key thing is to recognize when it’s potentially a scam and take those extra steps to extricate yourself from it or to not get involved with it at all.”
