85-year-old Massachusetts woman scammed out of over $10,000, authorities say

Authorities say that an 85-year-old Massachusetts woman was recently scammed out of $10,500 after responding to a scammers call.

According to Hingham Police, on Monday, the resident reported to police she had recently received a call from a person who claimed to be from “Apple Security”. The scammer said her Apple account had been hacked and gave instructions on how to purchase specific gift cards to resolve the issue. As instructed, she purchased $10,000 worth of Home Depot gift cards and $500 worth of Lowe’s gift cards and gave all the gift cards numbers to the scammers.

Those gift cards are typically used immediately online. This is a common scam with variations of “Windows Security” or “Internal Revenue Service” having been used in the past.

The woman’s family helped her notify her financial institutions and will monitor her accounts for future scams.