An area man has been taken advantage of in a scam that’s been prevalent lately.
Saline County Sheriff Roger Soldan tells KSAL News that the 69-year-old victim reported to authorities on Friday that he had been involved in a scam.
The man told deputies that he got an email from what he thought to be Best Buy’s “Geek Squad”. The email was about a membership and was charging him to renew. The victim then called a listed phone number to cancel the membership.
As the man made contact with a representative, the person told him they would need access to his computer. Access was granted, and the man told deputies that his computer was filled with coding soon after.
The representative then allegedly misled the victim, making him think $26,000 was accidentally transferred to the man’s account. The representative then convinced the man to go buy $26,000 in Best Buy gift cards to correct the supposed incorrect transfer. The victim complied. The same scenario followed two more times, with cash values of $25,000 and $9,500.
Soldan said that it seems the scammer got into the man’s online banking and was moving money from one of the victim’s accounts to his checking account to make him really believe that Geek Squad was accidentally transferring him thousands of dollars.
The total in losses for the man adds up to $60,500.
