What to Know
- A man who allegedly tried to scam a 91-year-old woman out of $9,000 has been arrested, police said
- A woman claiming to be the 91-year-old's granddaughter told her she needed to pay $9,000 in bail money because she'd been arrested
- When 31-year-old Guillermo Fernandez showed up to collect the money, he was arrested, police said
A man who allegedly tried to scam a 91-year-old woman out of $9,000 by getting an accomplice to pretend to be her granddaughter and in trouble has been arrested, police said.
The elderly Farmingdale woman got a phone call from an unknown woman claiming to be her granddaughter around 3 p.m. on Friday, Nassau County police said.
The woman told the 91-year-old she’d been arrested in Haiti before passing the phone to a man pretending to be a sergeant, who told the 91-year-old she’d need to put $9,000 in her mailbox for her granddaughter’s bail, according to police.
The 91-year-old withdrew the money from the bank, but then started to get suspicious and called her granddaughter, police said.
After learning her granddaughter was at work, the woman called the police, who told her to put the money in the mailbox as part of a plan to catch the scammer.
Not long after, Guillermo Fernandez, 31, of Washington Heights, drove up to the woman’s house and went to the mailbox to get the cash, police said.
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He was arrested and charged with third-degree grand larceny, and was expected to appear in court on Saturday, according to police.
Police haven’t yet arrested anyone else in connection with the attempted scam, but an investigation is ongoing.
