A Village of Silver Lake woman was scammed out of $1,200 after she received a phone call from a man claiming to be an Apple technician alerting her to fraud on her account.
The 64-year-old Village of Silver Lake woman went to the Lady Lake Police Department on Feb. 8 and explained that she had received a phone call informing her that her Apple identification had been compromised.
The caller claimed that “other users were still linked to her account” and he said that to remove those users she would have to purchase gift cards for each of them, according to an incident report from the Lady Lake Police Department.
She went to her bank and withdrew $1,200 in cash and purchased three gift cards at Target at Rolling Acres Plaza. One was in the amount of $200 while the other two were in the amount of $500.
She called back the man who said she would “only be out of the money temporarily for approximately 15 minutes,” the report said. She read him the codes off the back of the gift cards. He then claimed “time had expired” and he could not get her money back. He said he would need another $2,000. That is when she realized she had been scammed.
A police officer called the correct number for Apple – 1-800-MY-APPLE – where he was advised the company would never call a customer and would never instruct anyone to withdraw money from their bank account or purchase gift cards. The officer then called the number the woman had called and he spoke to a man with an obvious “accent and broken English.” The man used profanity toward the officer before hanging up.
“It was apparent that (the Villager) was the victim of a scam and would not get her money back from the transaction,” the officer wrote in the report.
