West Vancouver Police are renewing a warning to seniors about a long running scam that made BC wide headlines again Monday.

As recently as December 2009 West Vancouver Police raised a public alert over con artists targeting senior citizens with phone calls, claiming to be a lost grandchild in need of emergency financial help.  New media coverage has been sparked by reports of at least 3 Okanagan area seniors being victimized by the scam in the past week. 

West Vancouver Police have also received a new report today of an elderly woman targeted March 31, 2010.   The attempted fraud was detected and stopped by an alert bank employee being asked to process a money order.  West Vancouver Police would like all residents be wary of telephone calls targeting seniors in which a person claims to be a family member in need of money. 

In two separate investigations of this fraud technique in late 2009,  West Vancouver Police investigators were told individuals each received a call from a person claiming to be their grandson.   Each time the senior receiving the call made a guess at a name trying to figure out who was calling. The person placing the call used the name provided by the recipient, and then provided a story of difficulty in which they requested a large sum of money.

To make his plea sound credible, the person claiming to be the grandson handed the telephone over to another person claiming to be a lawyer. The second person then attempted to validate the grandson’s request for money.

Prospective victims are often told the money is needed to pay for a lawyer because the caller posing as the grandchild is claiming to have been involved in a motor vehicle accident while impaired, or the scam artist claimed to be in jail and in need of money to get out.

The West Vancouver Police would like to remind everyone not to provide any personal or financial information to anyone over the telephone or to send money by way of wire transfer to anyone whom they don’t know.

If you are the recipient of any calls of this nature, dial *57 to have the number recorded for police tracing, then call West Vancouver Police at 604-925-7300.