A 71-year-old woman from Sequim lost $125,000 in an elaborate scam after being tricked by fraudsters posing as federal agents investigating Amazon-related fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scam began on March 2 when the victim received a call from a man claiming to be from Amazon\u2019s Fraud Department. He then transferred her to another man who introduced himself as “John Davis,” supposedly an agent with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Davis” convinced the woman that she was caught up in a money laundering scheme and needed to prove her innocence by handing over cash to the FTC. Following his instructions, she withdrew large amounts of money, placed it in a lockbox, and delivered it to an \u201cagent\u201d at a local business. Over three separate meetings, she handed over a total of $125,000, receiving a single one-dollar bill in return each time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scam was uncovered when the woman\u2019s bank manager noticed the suspicious transactions and alerted her. This prompted an investigation by the Clallam County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On March 12, law enforcement set up a sting operation with the help of the Olympic Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Team. The victim was told to prepare another $40,000 for delivery. During the exchange, deputies arrested 35-year-old Alla Mashkova from Tacoma, who was identified as the driver of the suspect vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mashkova, who required a Ukrainian-speaking interpreter, was booked into Clallam County Jail on charges of second-degree extortion and attempted first-degree theft. Authorities believe more people were involved in the scam, and the investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 71-year-old woman from Sequim lost $125,000 in an elaborate scam after being tricked by fraudsters posing as federal agents investigating Amazon-related fraud. The scam began on March 2 when the victim received a call from a man claiming to be from Amazon\u2019s Fraud Department. He then transferred her to another man who introduced himself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,52,193,15,115],"tags":[223,132,82,109,33,43,47],"class_list":["post-5078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amazon-scam","category-grandparent-scam","category-online-scam","category-scam","category-scammer","tag-amazon-scam","tag-grandparent-scam","tag-online-scams","tag-scam","tag-scam-awareness","tag-scammers","tag-scams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5080,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078\/revisions\/5080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}