And to Think It Only Happens on TV Shows

Have her post on Facebook that her phone was stolen and if anyone gets a phone call from "her" to let her know. She also needs to call the cell phone provider.

I'd probably also call the police (non-emergency number) and ask what else they should do.

I have heard a crazy story like this from the owners of a B&B, there are lots of B&B's in their town (Cedar City, Utah, home of the Utah Shakespearean Festival) and they are good friends with most, if not all of the other B&B owners. Well, a couple that they are good friends with that own a neighboring B&B went on vacation to Mexico and while they were gone the couple in Cedar City got a phone call from them, the "husband" was on the phone with them and they heard the "wife's" voice in the background (and she had a distinctive "smoker's voice" that they recognized) the callers said that they had been robbed and need money to get new passports and tickets to get back to the USA. The couple that got the call totally believed them and they were going to send all the money they could, but then they had to call them back for some reason first so they called the hotel where their friends were staying and found out that their friends were just fine! They HAD been robbed, but only of the husband's cell phone, someone had stolen it and done an impression of their voices. So now ALL of the contacts on the cell phone had to be hastily called and warned about the scheme. These things really DO happen!

Immediately call her cell phone provider and report this. I'm sure the cell phone provider has ways to deal with this. They may cancel it or monitor it or whatever they do, but they should be called. And so should any other relatives whose numbers may have been in your niece's phone.

Someone tried to do this to a neighbor's aunt. She went along with it and told them she would send the money, took all the info. They called her 2 hours later because they didn't have it yet. She played along for a while and had fun playing their game. The police contacted the area they were calling from and just missed them to make an arrest but had video from the store. Don't know if they were in fact caught but they were hanging on for hours for some cash since they called after 2 hrs and then 2 more times an hour apart. Definitely call the cell company to cancel that phone. The niece and your dad should also report it since police can usually narrow the location of a phone by the cell tower. They might even be able to locate it exactly.

I had a very similar situation with a cousin of mine who lives in NY.

Got an email from her saying that they took a trip to the UK, and she was mugged outside their hotel, couldn't pay the bill due to stolen credit cards, the hotel won't let them leave without settling up, doesn't have her cell phone, so can't call anyone, so on, and so forth...

I immediately called my cousin's cell phone, which she immediately answered saying, "No, we are not in the UK!" LOL But it was no laughing matter... her email had been hacked (obviously) and she was in the process of fielding all the calls she was getting from the email that went out to her contacts.

I actually have heard of this before. I had a W. that called me (when I worked at the bank) frantic because she had given all of her account information over the phone to someone, the realized later that it was fraud. Luckily she called us right afterward and we were able to prevent anything from happening. Crooks are getting more and more clever.

There are also people that will call and say, "Hey this is your favorite nephew/son!" Then they will wait until you give them a name, and will go with that. Then the ask for money. It's really crazy.

Bottom line folks, if something feels off, go with your gut.

Glad you did not give money! Um they should report the phone stolen and cancel the service. Continue to be on guard :)

ug, someone hacked my facebook last year and started sending messages to my friends who were online that I was in the UK and had all my credit cards stolen and needed them to wire money so I could get home. I was po'd. Thank goodness no one fell for it, and that your dad did not fall for this!!

Thanks for letting us know this is not only on TV!

I would call the provicer for the cell phone and let them know of the scam and I would also be on high alert if I received any calls.

BTW..... here's another one... Last Friday, I was volunteering at the school and got a phone call from an area code I was not familiar with. I answered and it was an automatic Bank of America call saying I needed to update my profile and information immediately. Of course I did not fall for it and I hung up immediately. We changed our passcodes just in case there was an issue somewhere. You can't be too careful!!

ETA: Jennifer that is a great idea!! I've heard about this scam on FB chat.

Report it srolen and have it diconnected. Omg that's crazy! Yikes. Glad she is ok!

I got a call recently from "Bank of America" telling me that my mortgage payment was past due, and that they needed me to wire money immediately. Of course, I don't have any accounts with Bank of America, so I knew it was a phishing call.

A co-worker got a call from "Bank of America" (at work) telling him that there were some charges made on an account he had closed years ago, and that he had to transfer money immediately to cover the charges. He took down the account number information and then hung up, called his branch, and relayed this info to them. Of course the phone call he had received was bogus, just someone hoping to cash in if he had been gullible enough to believe them. Bank of America (the real one) started some kind of investigation into it (since he had written down the account number he was supposed to transfer money into).

Bottom line, you can't be too careful.

I haven't gotten any phone calls but tons of emails from my friends saying they were in othe countries and in trouble and please send money. And they were all fine and at home.

The most disturbing one I got was supposed to be from a Swiss Bank saying they were trying to locate family members from the Holocaust and had found my name and I was to contact them asap yada yada yada--it was a variation on the Nigeria scam. But it was so cruel because it was re-victimizing Holocaust families.

I also got one or several saying they were soldiers serving in Iraq or Afganstan and needed to move some funds or something and this had been cleared by the FBI and was all on the up and up ect ect ect

Then there is the one suppossedly sent by the FBI ...... I don't remember the details on that one.

I learned it does no good to call the FBI--local police or the the FCC they have so may drawers of complaints but they can ever actually nail anyone (most orginate in a foreign country) they have a strong case against them. But right now they have no jurisdiction.

Your neice needs to call everyone that was in her cell phone that might actually fall for something like this and warn them not to fall for this.

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Woah, crazy! I hope they call me, I'd love to play their game!

Have your niece call her cell carrier, inform them what is going on and cancel the cell phone--IMMEDIATELY!

And to think... when *I* got stranded out of country, I

a) Got a job to get enough money to get to the capitol
b) Went to the consulate

Silly me. I should have just phoned everyone I knew.
_______

This happened to my husband, though. Some of his friends actually wired money to London before we found out. Nope. Not in London. The thing is; we're OFTEN in London. So it made sense to his friends. Dangit!

Wow. I don't know WHAT to say!

Thank God he called YOU!

:)

Wow, thanks for posting. I watch more than my share of 48 Hour and like shows and have never heard of this! I will be sure to mention it to people so they know not to do this! If it were me, I tend to never believe people anyway so I would be very leary and would have been good at finding out if it were true or not before doing anything. =)

Someone got my mom's Facebook password and was sending chat messages to people on her friends list that she was stranded in London and needed money. They made the mistake of sending me a message.....I knew it was fake because my mom doesn't even know how to use the chat feature on Facebook! My aunt also sent me the message because she didn't fall for it either. It happens a lot more often than you think!

This happened to us only it was my nephew and he was supposedly in Canada. We didn't know anything about the scam and one of my sisters sent money. We were devastated to find out it was not real. We should have called my other sister (the mom of this nephew) because she could have told us that he was in school taking his final exams. We are not sure if they got info on him from Facebook. These creeps called my mom two more times asking for money but she was on to them then. Please be careful. Call your nieces parents right away and get to the bottom of this now.

something similar happened to my mom. My "stepson" called her in trouble. Fortunately, there were very many things that did not ring true, so she wasn't fooled. Crazy.

It needs to be reported to the police as fraud asap!