An 87-year-old woman was tricked by scammers she thought were helping her— and lost thousands of dollars.
RICHARDSON, Texas — It started with an email.
Darby Jolly’s 87-year-old mother thought the message was from her son. She opened it Monday — and that’s when the nightmare began.
“She opened it, and it blew up her screen in red and said ‘alert, alert, you’ve been hacked,’” Jolly said.
The message instructed her to call a phone number claiming to be Apple support.
“The first thing they said was you can’t call anybody else, they’ll be compromised,” Jolly said. “He said, ‘Well, your bank account has been hacked.’”
The man convinced her he was with Apple and claimed there had been two unauthorized withdrawals from her account — one to pay for ammunition and another for child pornography. He said he was transferring her to someone from her bank, who then appeared to verify the charges.
What followed were hours of manipulation by scammers using fear and urgency to isolate and control her.
“These people are trained to basically keep you on the phone,” said fraud expert Mike Dana. “And then they’re going to start saying things that basically sound like they make sense and that could be right — but they’re not.”
Jolly said the scammers knew her mother’s address and warned her that someone at the bank might be involved. They told her not to mention anything about the situation to bank employees.
They then convinced her to withdraw thousands of dollars from her account, promising that once she sent the money, they would help her open new accounts.
“He told her they’re going to ask you what this amount of money is for. And she said, ‘Well, what do I say?’” Jolly said.
They told her to say it was for home remodeling — which she did. Then they directed her to a gas station in Richardson, where she deposited the money into a Bitcoin ATM.
“Once it’s sent through the cryptocurrency… it’s gone,” said Richardson police spokesman Teddy Yoshida.
A receipt from the machine showed she sent $17,600.
“She came out to my house, she said, ‘I’ve had the worst day of my whole life,’” Jolly said. “As she’s telling me this, I’m like, ‘Oh Mom, I think you’ve been scammed.’”
Richardson police said they are asking businesses with cryptocurrency machines to post warning signs to help prevent similar crimes.
“She was just mortified. She was embarrassed,” Jolly said. “Now she’s just in sheer terror.”
Jolly is sharing her mother’s story to warn others — especially the elderly — about the increasingly sophisticated tactics scammers are using.
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