Port St. Lucie police warn of ‘grandparents scam’ linked to car sharing service

PORT ST. LUCY, Florida. Port St. Lucie police are warning the public following four recent cases of what they call “grandfather scams” that cost elderly victims nearly $100,000.

It all started with a phone call in October when Eric Lieberman’s 86-year-old mother from Greenacres answered.

“Supposedly, it was the lawyer of my nephew, her grandson. He was arrested and needed bail,” Lieberman said. “During the call, they actually got her to talk to my nephew, her grandson, and she swore it sounded like him.”

Lieberman said the person on the other line told his mom that her grandson needed $50,000 in collateral and asked her not to call her grandson but just to collect the cash as quickly as possible.

Alex Hagan / WPTV

“She was able to withdraw $16,000 from one of her accounts. an envelope that I’m sure he had no idea was full of cash in, to the guy on the street corner.”

As investigators in Palm Beach County work to solve the case, the same crime often referred to as the “grandfather scam” is now happening on Treasure Coast.

“In the past week, we have received four incidents involving elderly victims,” said Port St. Lucie Assistant Police Chief Mark DiMeo. “The money ranged from $9,000 to $48,000 in money taken from different times, totaling about $100,000.”

Dimeo told Contact 5 that this has happened before in Port St. Lucie, but this is the first time they are seeing an app like Uber being used to commit a crime.

“It’s something new that we haven’t seen before, but we see it now in these four cases, but this, again, led to urgency and led to that sense of panic in our victims when a car appeared and they handed over to pack ‘ DiMeo said. “They didn’t have time to react.”

According to police reports, Port St. Lucie police were able to gather some information from Uber drivers in some cases that could help the investigation.

Meanwhile, both the police and Lieberman have this warning for others.

“Eventually, my mother called my nephew’s cell phone and found out he was fine,” Lieberman said. “If someone asks you for money for someone in particular, call that person, check it out. Don’t listen to “don’t call”.