Gwinnett couple lost life savings to scammers pretending to be Geek Squad

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A Gwinnett County couple lost their life savings after becoming victims of an elaborate email scheme that federal authorities have flagged as increasingly dangerous.

Earlier this month, a 77-year-old father received an email from someone claiming to be from Geek Squad. In the email, the scammer said to call the number provided if the victim wanted to stop a $450 payment from going through for a membership renewal. Once the victim called the number, he became involved in an increasingly costly and common scheme.

“It’s really hard to see your parents go through this,” said Nina Comazzi, one of the daughters of the victim.

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Over the course of nine days, Comazzi’s father handed over his life savings through mostly gift card purchases, she told Channel 2 Gwinnett County Bureau Chief Matt Johnson.

“Three accounts were drained of $62,900 and they had 25 cents combined left,” she said.

The person on the phone talking to her father eventually fraudulently informed him that Geek Squad had sent him thousands of dollars by mistake and he needed to return the money or else the authorities would have to get involved, the victim’s family said.

“They said they had refunded him too much money and he needed to repay them,” said Diane Durham, another daughter.

By the time the victim’s adult children realized what had happened, the money was all gone. The scammer had him acquire $30,000 in Target gift cards alone and then read the card numbers and PINs over the phone. His family says he walked into multiple Target stores and made multiple gift card purchases with cash. Each transaction was with $1,000 in cash.

“Neither the bank nor these stores, nor our parents figured out something was clearly wrong here,” said Durham.

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In a statement, a Target spokesperson said:

“We are aware of the prevalence of gift card scams and take them very seriously. Our cyber fraud and abuse team uses a multi-layered approach to protect our guests, including technical controls and team member training, and has led industry-wide consumer awareness campaigns about these scams and common tactics. We provide continued education to our team members about gift card scams and encourage them to look for guests purchasing high dollar amounts or large quantities of gift cards, or tampering with gift cards in stores.

The family filed a report with Gwinnett County police and said the number that the victim dialed was a Maryland phone number.

The FTC began warning people about the prevalence of Geek Squad scams last year.

The victim’s family has begun raising money online to try and start to rebuild their parents’ savings.

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