This is a funny story that should warm your heart!
If you’ve had grandma or grandpa targeted like this you will be thrilled to see this news!
From NBC News,
Telephone scam artist picked the wrong target — former FBI and CIA director William Webster
Former spy chief William Webster and his wife Lynda nabbed the creep! Photo: https://capitolfile-magazine.com/getting-to-know-former-cia-and-fbi-director-william-webster
A telephone scam artist picked the wrong target — former FBI chief and CIA boss William Webster. Phone scam artist was Jamaican Keniel Thomas, 29, from Jamaica, pleaded guilty in October to interstate communication with the intent to extort, federal authorities said. He was sentenced to 71 months in prison last week by U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell in Washington, D.C., and will be deported after he has served his term, officials said.
Thomas made his first call to Webster on June 9, 2014, identifying himself as David Morgan. He said that he was the head of the Mega Millions lottery and that Webster was the winner of $15.5 million and a 2014 Mercedes Benz, according to court documents.
Little did Thomas know that he was targeting the man who had served as director of the FBI and then the CIA under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
“It seemed to me that something wasn’t quite right,” Webster, 94, said in an interview Tuesday with “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.” “This was pretty obvious to me that there was something fishy about it.” Thomas told Webster and his wife, Lynda, that they must pay him $50,000 to cover the taxes on the prize, authorities said. The Websters notified the FBI, and the agency recorded follow-up calls the couple had with Thomas.
This guy was meaner than most…
“He terrified me,” Lynda Webster told NBC News. “He told me that what the sniper’s bullet would do to my head and the blood would go onto my white house.”
The FBI eventually learned Thomas’s identity and arrested him on Dec. 18, 2017, when he landed at JFK International Airport in New York, unaware he was a wanted man.
I don’t know about you, but I get phone scams on a regular basis. If you are feeling as feisty as the Websters, do some homework and figure out how you can work with the feds to nab a foreign scammer.
At minimum be sure to educate grandma and grandpa about these crooks.
What do you do?