A Vancouver senior wants to warn the public of a phone scam after she was tricked into buying $20,000 in gift cards.
The 74-year-old says she received a phone call on May 25 from someone who sounded exactly like her 24-year-old grandson.
The man told the senior he had been involved in a car accident that had injured someone and that he needed money to pay a lawyer.
“Within the first minute or two, you are grabbed emotionally,” said the woman, who CBC News is not naming to protect her privacy.
The senior said the man pressured her and said the “court system has to be paid.”
She said she received a second call shortly after from a different person who pretended to be her grandson’s lawyer.
‘She was pretty confused’
Over the next five days, both fraudsters called repeatedly, sometimes together.
They convinced the senior to go to several Safeway and Best Buy locations over five days, where she bought $2,000 gift cards in 10…