YPSILANTI, Mich. (WXYZ) — A local businessman went above and beyond in Washtenaw County last week to help an elderly Dundee woman recover nearly $12,000 in cash; money that would have been sent to a scammer.
The victim didn’t want us to use her name, so we’ll call her Beth for this story.
Beth, who is in her 70s, said this all happened Oct. 18. Dundee Police are actively investigating.
The Dundee Police Department even put a warning out about the scam on their Facebook page.
“Did you expect to help her get the cash back?” we asked Mateen Jaffer, owner of Jafferson Computers in Ypsilanti.
"No," he said.
That’s because Mateen knows that most scams like this one, don’t end well. And they certainly don't usually end with the victim recovering their lost funds.
The headache for Beth started first with a phone call. Then the scammer instructed Beth to follow directions on her computer.
“I received an email, looked like it was from the Geek Squad,” Beth said.
Only it wasn’t.
But Beth, as so many others are, was fooled. Because she recently had work done on her computer by Mateen, at his store in Ypsilanti.
The scammer, still on the phone with Beth, told her she’d get a refund for recent services. She was instructed to go to a certain website.
“And he said type in $120. So, I typed in $120 and then before I could the decimal point it didn’t take the decimal and it went zero zero,” Beth said, noticing $12,000 seemingly appeared in her bank account.
This is when the phishing scammer got control of Beth’s computer and made her believe she somehow had accidentally taken too much of a refund.
“It looked like he had deposited $12,000 in my checking,” Beth revealed. "So, I think oh my God I’ve got their money! Now what am I going to do?”
Beth said the man on the phone told her he may lose his job if he didn't have the money returned. Preying on her desire to do the right thing, this is when Beth was told to take money out of her account and send it to Las Vegas, where the crook said the company was headquartered.
She then withdrew $12,000 from her account, wrapped it up, and dropped it off at a UPS Store to be shipped Vegas.
It was at this point Beth’s suspicions grew to full on alarm bells. She knew she’d been scammed. Not sure of what to do, she called Mateen, who had just worked on her computer.
“What? How? But, then at the same time it’s like whatever happened, now we need to take action,” Mateen said when Beth contacted him after being scammed.
Without hesitation, Mateen went to the closest UPS store to him to see what could be done. With more help from a good samaritan there they were able to track the package to a local distribution center in Monroe. They were able to locate the package and hold it just before it was to be loaded on a truck.
“How in the world can someone scam someone in my community?” Mateen said of his desire to help Beth.
He opened his store in the early 2000s and has helped dozens of clients after they fell victim to scams, often online.
“Some just get malware spyware, some get scammed for a few hundred dollars, some get scammed for thousands," he said."
He works with Washtenaw County Senior Leaders program if they need help or insight on things tech-related.
This month, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) reported online scams have gone up 87% in the last 7 years.
Both the BBB and the Michigan Attorney General's office have lots of tips to avoid scams, as scammers are getting better and better.
Among the top warnings? Never click a link or open an email from someone you don’t know. In Beth’s case, it was a website that started with a strange phone call.
And, don’t ever send cash in the mail to someone you don’t know. Legit companies won’t ever ask you to do this.
Dundee Police and UPS Security is looking into Beth’s case, as is a law enforcement agency in Nevada.
That same day, she drove to the UPS distribution center to collect her cash.
As for Mateen, who spent hours helping her find it, Beth calls him a hero.
