An almost 90-year-old grandfather was recently scammed out of $50,000 in iTunes vouchers, police detectives have revealed.
Calling the scam artists “the lowest of the low,” Detective Mike Oakley says that the victim received a call on May 3 from a person pretending to be his grandson and saying they had been involved in a serious car accident during a vacation in Florida.
Over a course of days, the scam artist persuaded the senior citizen to purchase a series of $4,000-$7,000 sums in iTunes vouchers, and then phone to share the account number on the cards.
The excuses for asking for the money ran the gamut from damage to rental cars to lawyer fees and personal injury claims. The thief claimed a reimbursement check was in the mail, but it never arrived. It was only after speaking to his real grandson that the victim realized the extent of the scam.
He handed more than 91 iTunes cards over to police as part of the ongoing investigation.
Tragically, police say there’s not much they can do about getting the victim’s money back, but they’re hoping that publicizing the case will help spread the word so that other people avoid being suckered in to similar scenarios.
Source: News Herald
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
3 responses to “Grandfather scammed out of $50,000 in iTunes scam”
1. Police provide apple with the codes on the gift card
2. Apple cancels them
3. At the bare minimum, Apple gives this guy $50,000 in itunes gift codes. If they’re cool they refund him.
No, I think Apple would just give him a refund if he paid cash, if he paid by credit card, then the CC company just wipes the debt off his CC and Apple cancels the gift cards. The thing is, I don’t think the Gift Card codes are on the receipt, which is the only thing he would have had, I’m sure he’s not sharp enough to write down all of the codes on a Piece of Paper, just in case it was a scam.
Hopefully, they’ll clean up the mess and capture those scam artists and give them a nice jail cell to live in.
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