WESTLAKE, Ohio — At 12:30 p.m. on April 25, an employee of a convenience store on Dover Center Road at Center Ridge Road reported to police that a scam was in progress.
An older woman was in the store depositing large sums of cash into a cryptocurrency ATM and did not believe the employee’s warning that she was being defrauded. Officers found the victim depositing $100 bills into the machine while talking on the phone. At first, she did not believe the officers when they told her about the scam.
The woman was on the phone with a man who claimed to be a Federal Trade Commission agent. The bogus agent hung up once an officer got on the phone.
Earlier, the victim received a pop-up message on her laptop stating that her Facebook account was compromised. It instructed her to call a phone number for “Microsoft.” However, the number was bogus, and a fraudulent support person told the victim that her Facebook account was hacked and that child pornography was planted on it. The caller said that the FTC had to clear up the hacking.
The victim lost several thousand dollars.
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