BEAVERCREEK — Billions of dollars are lost to crypto scams, and one Miami Valley Police Department is crediting a postal carrier for stopping one scam in its tracks.
Officers said she called police after seeing an elderly woman depositing hundreds of dollars into a Crypto ATM.
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News Center 7’s Xavier Hershovitz was in Greene County Thursday, where officers are seeing a growing trend in Crypto scams.
Lisa Cordes, of Germantown, said, “We’re out there six days a week.” She has been a postal carrier for more than 20 years. But her usual stop at the Shell station on Dayton-Xenia Road was unlike anything she’d seen before.
“I noticed an older woman at a Bitcoin machine with a phone, cell phone at her ear, and she looked kind of puzzled,” Cordes said.
The woman was feeding $100 bills into a Crypto ATM. Cordes feared the woman was in the middle of being scammed.
“I thought, well, I’ll try to speak to her. She didn’t want to listen to me. She was insistent that her IT people were helping her keep her money safe,” Cordes said.
She called Beavercreek Police, and officers were able to track down the woman. Officers said the woman was being scammed, talking with someone on the phone claiming to be a legal authority.
Officer David Durkin with Beavercreek Police said, “$20,000 that was deposited, and then an initial or a secondary $16,000 that was prevented.”
They said it’s part of a growing trend of criminals using Crypto in their scams.
“Recovering funds is very difficult. So, trying to get ahead of it is kind of the goal,” Durkin said.
Officers are reminding people that no law enforcement, court, or government agency will ever demand money over the phone. They are encouraging people - that if you see something, say something.
“Lisa’s the true hero in this situation. Her seeing something and then saying something about it, and reporting that incident allowed us to get involved so that we can prevent any further damage,” Durkin said.
Beavercreek Police said so many scams are often underreported because of the shame of admitting what happened. They said there is no shame in being scammed. By reporting it to police, they do a lot of work to track down the bad guys and maybe even get you some money back.
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