Perry woman loses hundreds of dollars to scammer
PERRY, Ga. (WGXA) -- Scammers, they disguise themselves so well. One Perry woman says she never saw it coming after she was scammed out of hundreds of dollars.
Ro'sheca Napier says it all started with an order from Amazon that she had issues with. That's when she hopped online looking for Amazon's customer service but, instead, she was connected with a scammer disguising themselves as a customer service representative for Amazon.
Napier admits things were a little questionable during her conversation with them because they asked her to download an app. It ended up being an app that allowed the scammer to hack into her phone. That's when things took a turn for the worse.
"I was mad and very upset because I had other stuff to do, so it was like when I went back to my account, it's like wow," she recalls. "They just really took my money and I really need my money back."
Napier says that's when she texted the scammer looking to get her money back. Unfortunately, that's when things got even worse for her.
"So they responded back to me and I was like whoever you are, you're going to go to jail because you just took my money. Then after that, they called me out my name, they cursed me out, they called me all kinds of names." Napier said.
She says the loss of her money was a big impact, adding, "I was trying to get stuff done for my son because he was just starting school." But even after all the devastation to her pocketbook, she didn't stop.
She went to the police and filed a report. She says Perry police got to work. Napier added, "Then after that, I got my money back."
Perry Detective Ike Wilcox says it's an outcome that rarely happens. "They were very fortunate," he began. "If you go to a bank and you withdraw your own money out of your own account that's a hundred percent legal, there's nothing wrong with that and how you spend your money should be your business, so if you're fooled into giving your money into a scammer, the bank often does not have to refund and we see a lot of folks who take this as a total loss and it's difficult to recover."
Wilcox says there have been cases where victims have lost six figures. To help people avoid becoming a victim, they will be looking to educate people next month on June eighth with a class called Stop the Scam from 6:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M.
Seats are limited and you must pre-register. You can do that by following this link, clicking on the programs tab and then Perry PD Citizen Engagement.
