An 80-year-old many thought he found his dream truck, but it ended up in a nightmare that cost him $23k.
A man in Pennsylvania recently tried to purchase his dream truck, only to be scammed out of quite the sum of cash. The unnamed man was the victim of a wire scam, which is unfortunately extremely common, especially with the elderly, and now he is out $23k and has not truck to show for it. This heartbreaking account should have you checking in with your parents and grandparents to make sure they’re aware of how easy it is to be blinded by a dream car, and taken to the cleaners.
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The 80-year-old man would have been born in the 1941/1942 year range, so finding a 1941 Chevy Pickup truck in 2021 must have seemed like destiny. This started in early November, according to the Pennsylvania State Police Department at Dublin. According to the agency, “an unknown actor (who) falsely identified themselves as a white, non-Hispanic male, who was selling an antique motor vehicle online.”
The scammer instructed the elderly man to wire $23k as a payment for the 1941 Chevy pickup truck from Wells Fargo Bank to Citibank. Police noted that “the vehicle was never delivered and all accounts from the seller were deleted.”
According to the Federal Trade Commission, “Wiring money is like sending cash — once it’s gone, you probably can’t get it back.” Another agency noted “U.S. consumers lose millions of dollars each year to fraudsters using wire transfers as part of their scams.”
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