Except for a chance encounter earlier Thursday, a Kingdom City woman might have lost $4,000 in a classic grandmother scam.
On Thursday morning the woman received a call from a youngster. When she answered the phone, the caller said: "Is this grandma?"
She then asked if it was her grandson who lives in Hermann calling and the caller replied that indeed it was.
The caller said a friend told him that another friend had died in a car accident in Mexico. The caller said he was riding along with his friend to Mexico to go to the funeral when they were picked up by Mexican National Police for using a cell phone while driving. When police searched the car, they found drugs and all people in the car, including her grandson, were thrown in jail.
The person claiming to be her grandson told her he needed $4,000 in bail money but asked her not to tell his parents because he wanted to break the news to them himself after he got back from Mexico. He told her that he also had a warrant out for his arrest and it would not be easy to get out of jail.
He asked her to send a $4,000 MoneyGram to Haiti "because that's where the drugs came from and they will send you a refund of all of your $4,000 within 48 hours if you send the money quickly."
The Kingdom City woman said she was thinking about sending the money when her son told her the call couldn't be true because he had seen her grandson only a few hours ago on his way to school.