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In 2024, scammers posing as federal agents took nearly $400,000 from an Indiana woman; she now shares her story to warn others
Mary Ellen Strange lost about three hundred seventy-eight thousand dollars over two months in 2024 after a fake Amazon fraud call spiraled into a sophisticated impersonation scheme. The caller posed first as an Amazon fraud detective, then as a Federal Trade Commission officer, and told Strange she faced money laundering charges unless she moved quickly and stayed silent. He directed her to withdraw cash, buy gift cards, use Bitcoin machines, and hand over gold coins and bars in three separate pickups. Strange also drained one of her two annuities, which later left her owing nearly one hundred thousand dollars in federal taxes on the withdrawn funds. She realized it was a scam in August 2024 when the caller went silent and her accounts were never locked as threatened. Strange now works with AARP and the Justice Department’s Elder Fraud Initiative to warn others, and she is lobbying Congress to change tax laws that punish scam victims.
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In 2024, scammers posing as federal agents took nearly $400,000 from an Indiana woman; she now shares her story to warn others
Mary Ellen Strange lost about three hundred seventy-eight thousand dollars over two months in 2024 after a fake Amazon fraud call spiraled into a sophisticated impersonation scheme. The caller posed first as an Amazon fraud detective, then as a Federal Trade Commission officer, and told Strange she faced money laundering charges unless she moved quickly and stayed silent. He directed her to withdraw cash, buy gift cards, use Bitcoin machines, and hand over gold coins and bars in three separate pickups. Strange also drained one of her two annuities, which later left her owing nearly one hundred thousand dollars in federal taxes on the withdrawn funds. She realized it was a scam in August 2024 when the caller went silent and her accounts were never locked as threatened. Strange now works with AARP and the Justice Department’s Elder Fraud Initiative to warn others, and she is lobbying Congress to change tax laws that punish scam victims.