At ten o’clock on a Sunday night, my eighty-six-year-old mother received a call from a girl who sounded like my daughter, then a college student. Crying, the caller said that she had gone to Canada with friends, their car had broken down, and they were stranded without money. Could Grammie please wire $700 right away, so they could get back to campus?

So, without wondering why Elizabeth didn’t call my husband or me, my mother woke my father, who was struggling with Alzheimer’s, bundled him into the car, and drove the ten miles to their bank. But she had never used an ATM before and couldn’t follow the directions in the dark. So then she drove until she found a supermarket that was still open—and they’re rare in Maine on a Sunday night. Fortunately, when she tearfully explained the situation, the clerk told her that she’d been scammed and sent my parents home.

“The girl knew Elizabeth’s name, her roommate’s name, the University of Maine, and the fact that we’d gone there, too. She sounded just like Elizabeth!” my mother insisted, still teary the next day.

A young woman with her arm around an old woman.

The author’s mother, Elizabeth Furlong, with her daughter, Elizabeth Reynolds. | Courtesy of Cynthia Furlong Reynolds

My mother was saved by a clerk who cared. But countless others have not been as fortunate.

Ann Arbor police detective Brad Rougeau knows the “child in trouble” story by heart. “Until recently, that was one of the oldest and most pervasive scams,” he says. “Those people prey on the elderly, who frighten easily. … they get scared, they get rushed, and they fall for the bait.”

Recently, Rougeau was contacted by a seventy-six-year-old retiree who had been dealing with someone she thought was a Microsoft representative. It wasn’t. 

She’d received a spam message that claimed there was a problem with her computer and called the “help” number it provided. She gave the bogus support rep her password and let him connect to her computer to “fix” and “maintain” it, giving him complete access to all her personal records.

“This kind of criminal is very, very good at what they do,” Rougeau says. “They know all the right things to say to people who aren’t tech-savvy.” 

As they did with my mother and daughter, they often feed on social media posts. Birthdays, names of friends and family members, colleges, jobs, organizations, hobbies, habits, and even aspirations can be fodder for fraud.

“Honestly, I don’t think anyone should put anything on social media,” Rougeau says. “Or at least, limit your posts to your very closest friends and family members.”

According to the May/June AARP Bulletin, older Americans “reported nearly $4.9 billion stolen through fraud last year, with an average loss of $83,000.” Rougeau says it’s the fastest-growing crime across the nation—“and anything that happens in big cities, happens here.” To keep up, he says, the AAPD “narcotics unit now spends some of its time involved with check fraud and identity theft.”

Not long ago, the U.S. attorney’s office in Milwaukee called to report they’d arrested a “money mule” whose records indicated that he handled $400,000 bilked from an Ann Arbor resident. Yet when the detective knocked on the woman’s door, she denied she’d been victimized.

“It looks like he had access to your account,” Rougeau persisted.

“It’s okay. It’s not my money,” she told him, refusing any assistance.

“Often people don’t want their kids or others to know they’ve been robbed,” the detective says, sighing. “They want to remain independent, and they don’t want to be embarrassed.”

In 2021, a survey by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found that nationally, only seven percent of victims reported these incidents to the police, and only 67 percent contacted their credit card companies or banks to alert them.

Banks and money-transfer apps are becoming more proactive in warning clients when they transfer money online—but now scammers are asking to be paid in cryptocurrency instead.

“When I interviewed one woman, she told me that she had been directed to a cryptocurrency ATM in Pittsfield Township, and the caller had to tell her how to use it,” Rougeau says. “In that particular pickup, she lost $28,000.

“I got records from the company operating that ATM, including videos showing this woman at the ATM. We arranged for her to tell the scammer she would meet him at a predetermined location—except he met us instead. She has $500,000 in total losses—we’re still working to help her reclaim her money.

“She’s just one victim among countless others all over the country.” 

Scammers call it “pig butchering.” They present themselves as friends or romantic interests, then, after winning their victims’ trust, invent an urgent need or offer a “sure-bet” investment to take their money. Rougeau knows of a gentleman who lost $4 million dollars in a romance scam.

“The best thing we can do is to talk about scams and fraud and look out for our older relatives and friends, neighbors, and children, so they feel comfortable coming to us and asking, ‘This doesn’t seem right. What do you think?’” he says. “Education is one way we can fight this.”

The detective is also concerned about scams involving U-M’s international students, particularly those from China and Hong Kong. 

“They often have access to a lot of money, and they know they need to stay within the good graces of the [Chinese] government. I’ve known of some who have been threatened and have sent $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 at a time.”

“Identity theft is defined as the illegal use of someone else’s personal information, especially in order to obtain money or credit,” AAPD sergeant Mark Pulford tells a gathering of seniors at a session sponsored by a financial planner.

“Why do people fall victim?” he asks rhetorically. Pulford’s answer explains why elderly grandparents would climb into a car late on a Sunday night without questioning why their granddaughter didn’t contact her parents first. “The thieves’ methods always play on someone’s emotions. The callers express an urgent need—they are always in a hurry. They know that if they incite our fears, we lose our rational thinking.”

He lists three warning signs:

One: If a stranger suddenly wants to become your friend.

Two: If online communications have spelling errors or use the word “immediately.”

Three: If the person stresses urgency—especially if he or she claims to be from the IRS, Social Security, law enforcement, or another institution.

If the pitch is made by email, Pulford tells the group to hover their computer cursors over the supposed sender’s name to see the email address. “If it’s strange, delete the message immediately.”

Even if it seems legitimate, “refrain from clicking on the link. Do your research and find the official website or phone number then contact them.” Above all, the sergeant recommends, “Slow down, take away your emotion, and become a detective.

“Don’t click on computer links you didn’t initiate. If someone calls claiming to be your grandchild, or calling on behalf of a family member, hang up, call the family member, and check. Develop your critical thinking skills.”

But with artificial intelligence tools “able to replicate voices and expressions, being discriminating will be harder than ever,” he cautions. “Criminals now use AI to prey on our worst fears.”

What should a victim do?

“Immediately call the police,” Pulford says flatly. “We’ll launch an investigation—though I have to warn you that we have no way to follow up on criminals if money has been sent out of the country.”

Email scammers are constantly trying new substitutes for Xfinity.

Recently, my bank called at eight o’clock in the morning to ask if I was trying to connect my credit card to an Apple Pay. “I have an Android phone, so, NO!” The bank immediately canceled my credit card and promised to send another—the third in sixteen months, thanks to various fraudulent schemes we’ve been fortunate enough to duck.

Every day, I eliminate between four and six emails supposedly from my internet provider but with various spellings of XFin’ity and X’finity. One subject line included three Cyrillic letters, and I’ve seen several with Chinese characters. I imagine they all announce I must immediately verify personal and confidential information, or my email address will be canceled and never again reinstated. Also hurrying to my Trash button are the messages thanking me for my order of a $595 computer system that will be sent to a Texas address, or the renewal of a nonexistent Geek Squad membership.

Occasionally, however, would-be fraudsters make me laugh. Not long ago, I received four email friend requests in a row from four different people, each sporting the identical picture of Great British Bake Off host Paul Hollywood, and each promising he loved me and wanted to meet me. When I hovered my cursor over the supposed senders, the email addresses revealed African-sounding names.

“In this day and age, we all have to be proactive,” Pulford says. “Be aware of what scams are making the rounds, report any instances of identity theft, communicate with your bank and credit card companies, check your statements carefully, and avoid responding to any written communication that uses the words ‘urgent’ and ‘immediately.’”

“We work hard to prevent fraud and catch the culprits, but we don’t always get our man,” Rougeau says.

But eleven years after my mother received that late-night call from a woman claiming to be my daughter, federal prosecutors finally caught and charged more than two dozen culprits engineering a massive “Grandparent Scam” that bilked more than $21 million—in the past three years alone—from elderly people in at least forty states.

Thanks to an alert supermarket clerk, the Furlongs weren’t among them.

This article has been edited since it was published in the August 2025 Ann Arbor Observer. The issue date and name of the AARP Bulletin was corrected.