Cecil Rodgers is your typical senior citizen from Cincinnati. He has been a husband, a grandfather, and a friend. So even though he was looking forward to spending some time with his family, when he got an unnerving call that his eldest grandson needed help he was ready to do what he had to do so that he could help them. Rodgers recalled: “A voice comes on and says, ‘Papaw, this is your oldest grandson. I’m in trouble.”
“He said, ‘I hit a woman’s car and she was seven months pregnant. And they charged me with drunken driving and I’m in jail,’” Rodgers says he had been told before a lawyer got on the phone and said that in order for Rodgers to help his grandson, he should go to a Walmart and transfer $2,300 to another store, where the lawyer said he was going to pick it up so he could use it to post his grandson’s bail so that he could get out.
The lawyer assured Cecil Rodgers that everything was going to be okay once he was able to get the money from him. Thus, the caring grandfather wasted no time, and headed toward his local Walmart in the Cincinnati suburbs so that he could transfer the money. However, things weren’t going to go exactly as planned. You see, Walmart checker Audrella Taylor wasn’t going to cooperate with Mr. Rodgers’ plan.
After Mr. Rodgers withdrew the funds from an ATM, he went to the cashier and handed her the money. This is when he came face to face with Audrella, and he thought that this Walmart employee was going to do just as he asked her to do. However, she balked and was very adamant that she wouldn’t approve of this transaction. In the long run, Mr. Rodgers wasn’t mad, but actually very grateful to her instead.
Cecil Rodgers was very lucky indeed. You see, he opened up to Audrella about his grandpa’s emergency. As he started to explain what happened, that is when the cashier put a stop to the transaction. This desperate, elderly man in front of her was very determined to help his grandson, Audrella smelled a rat almost immediately. She would turn out to be right.
Although Rodger definitely had pure intentions, the same cannot be said about the caller who had claimed to be his grandson. As it turned out, the voice on the other end of the line was nothing more than a good voice actor and he wasn’t Rodgers’ grandson at all.
Moreover, the second person that took the line was no more a lawyer than I am the President of the United States. Instead, scammers are preying on the elderly in this manner in what has been called a “grandparent scam.”
“He said something about somebody was locked up in jail, he got a call, and he needed to come in to send $2,000,” Audrella recalled. “I said, ‘Well, I am going to refuse the sender. I’m not going to let you send that money because I think you’ve been scammed.’”
Audrella explained that one of the things that made her suspicious was the fact that the call had been made to the grandfather instead of the child’s mother. “Because his daughter hadn’t been contacted yet, I felt like if a son was in true need, the mom would have been contacted first before the grandpa would,” she explained.
She proceeded to tell Rodgers that she wanted him to hold off the minute, calm down, and go call his other family members. She believed that he was going to find out that his grandson was fine, and sure enough, that’s exactly what transpired. Rodgers’ grandson was indeed safe at college.
Come to find out, there had not been a car accident, and his grandson had not been arrested. The entire call was a scam, and the so-called lawyer was simply trying to get him to rush. While the lawyer claimed that his grandson would be “embarrassed” if he called anyone, he was only saying that so that his scam wouldn’t be discovered. However, due to the quick thinking of this Walmart checker, this grandfather and his wallet were saved, and for that, Cecil Rodgers is now eternally grateful. There are still good people in the world today, and thank God for that.