US Lyft driver caught in ‘grandparent scam’ saved grandfather from losing RM30,000

Lyft driver Lori Kimbler was concerned about the man who lurched with a cane to her car and asked for a little more time but never returned. So she knocked on his door to make sure he was okay.

The 79-year-old man was sitting at a kitchen table covered in cash.

“I’m still counting the money,” Kimbler told him.

“Can you help me?” he asked, frantic and struggling to count the bills as his hands shook, she said.

A Lyft driver based in eastern North Carolina, Kimbler had agreed to a fare to pick up a person, who then called and said she would be picking up important “documents” at a home in Pamlico County.

“I didn’t think I’d bring that kind of paper,” she said of the scene she witnessed in the man’s kitchen.

It’s a scheme that Kimbler, the man’s family and law enforcement say North Carolina seniors need to guard against.

The phone call

On April 26 around 4 p.m., the man, who asked that his name not be published, received a phone call from who he thought was his grandson, he said in a telephone interview .

The caller said he had a broken nose, stitches in his lip and a broken leg after an accident. And police found an open bottle of alcohol in his car.

The voice didn’t sound like his grandson’s, the man said, but he thought the injuries were affecting his voice.

Just as the man hung up, the phone rang again, he said. A subsequent caller asked for US$6,500 (RM30,865) to bail his grandson out of prison, which the grandfather would get back once his grandson went to court.

The caller said a Lyft driver would come pick up the money. The man, whom his grandchildren call Pops, had just enough time to get to the bank before it closed, so he went.

That’s when Kimbler got involved. The Lyft fare was prepaid. The client said her name was Marabell, she worked for an attorney, and she wanted the “documents” delivered to Raleigh.

After Kimbler entered the man’s house, she helped him put US$6,500 (RM30,865) into four envelopes. She also wrote out a makeshift receipt, giving him her name and phone number.

But as she walked away with the money, the 66-year-old mother of three began to worry.

“It didn’t feel right,” she said.

The crooks followed the driver

About 10 minutes into her drive to Raleigh, Kimbler stopped at a gas station to fill up. Suddenly, “Marabell” called her, asking why she had stopped.

When Kimbler stopped again a few minutes later, just to see what would happen, the woman called back. The follow-up made Kimbler even more suspicious.

Kimbler called Lyft to ask if the drivers could even deliver cash. Someone put her on hold for 20 minutes, then the call was disconnected, she said.

That’s when Kimbler contacted the man and suggested he contact her grandson, she said.

The man did it. It turned out that the grandson was not in prison. He was driving with his girlfriend Hannah Watts, 24, on their way to a vacation in Wilmington.

“Well, I just sent US$6,500 (RM30,865) to get you out,” the man told his grandson, Watts said in a telephone interview.

The couple spoke to Kimbler and asked him to return the money. She called New Bern police, she said, and they forwarded the call to the Pamlico County Sheriff’s Office. She asked someone to be present when she handed over the money, just in case the scammers were still stalking her.

Deputies met her at the man’s home, Pamlico County Sheriff Maj. Scott Houston confirmed.

The grandparents scam

It turns out Kimbler disrupted what law enforcement calls the “grandparent scam.”

The scam dates back several years and the FBI has received reports about it since at least 2008.

The situation often involves a caller posing as a family member, often a grandchild who needs bail and doesn’t want their parents to know.

Fraudsters are using every tool possible to convince older Americans and improve their chances of getting money by gleaning information about their family members from social media or using technology that can clone voices, disguise phone numbers and creating fake photos, according to federal reports.

A more recent twist involves scammers getting money by sending unwitting drivers for ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft to collect the money, something the FBI warned about in 2021.

Nazneen Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina attorney general’s office, which investigates fraud against elderly residents, said last week that officials in her office were unaware of the grand-defrauding complaints. parents involving rideshare drivers here.

But it happened elsewhere. In April, an 81-year-old Ohio man received a call that his nephew was in jail, then shot the Uber driver sent to collect the money.

There have been recent federal indictments and convictions for these scams in the Northeast, which demonstrate the perplexity of some fraudulent operations.

On February 29, 2024, a Bronx, New York man was sentenced to nearly seven years in federal prison for his role in recruiting and coordinating couriers in a grandparent scheme operation based in the Dominican Republic attacking individuals in Pennsylvania, according to the United States. Prosecutor’s office there.

On April 30, 16 people were indicted in New Jersey federal court for various crimes, accused of operating a sophisticated call center network in the Dominican Republic that defrauded elderly people in several states of millions of dollars, according to the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The fraud included “openers” posing as family members claiming they were in difficulty and “closers” who said they were sending money by post or courier.

Response from Lyft

When contacted about the incident, a Lyft spokesperson wrote that unknowingly involving drivers in scams is “unacceptable and not tolerated” by the platform.

The spokesperson said he had been in contact with Kimbler but did not answer questions about whether it was appropriate for drivers to deliver cash.

Kimbler said the company told her after the fact that it was suggested not to deliver packages, but she doesn’t think that’s enough.

Lyft should send a mass email informing drivers about the scam and what they should do if someone tries to solicit drivers to participate without their knowledge, she said.

“Drivers need to realize that things like this happen,” Kimbler said. “If you feel like something isn’t right, follow your gut, because it probably isn’t.”

On Thursday, Kimbler said the incident, along with the situation in which she was groped by a passenger in October, made her reluctant to commit to driving, even if she had to pay her rent.

“It made me very scared and nervous,” she said. “You don’t know who gets in the car.” – The Charlotte Observer/Tribune press service