Soddy-Daisy resident Maria Arndt suffers from HIV and lives on $857 a month in Social Security benefits.
Despite those tough circumstances, she said a man still called her several times last week pressuring her to take out a loan from US Bank and send it to him as an “application fee” for thousands of dollars in free government money.
“I told him all that and he still wanted to hurt me. That’s what really disturbs me,” Ms. Arndt said.
The victim of a financial scam before, Ms. Arndt, 68, said she’s just lucky she didn’t fall for it again.
But others do on a regular basis, Legal Aid of East Tennessee Associate Director Russell Fowler said, and it’s become worse since the onset of the economic downturn. Scam artists now tend to use the names of legitimate banks and the federal government’s track record of legitimate aid programs to trick elderly people hurting for money, he said.
“The scams on the elderly are constantly changing, but the idea is usually always the same. ‘Send money and we’ll send you more money,'” Mr. Fowler said, adding that the federal government doesn’t just send people checks in the mail for no documented reason. “It’s the oldest, most famous scam out there.”
Because the elderly account for the majority of victims, Legal Aid of East Tennessee employs one attorney whose sole responsibility is to help older people who often have lost their savings and even their homes to financial scams and predatory lending practices.
The problem is so pervasive, Mr. Fowler said, that the elderly don’t even have to meet the income guidelines that others normally must meet to qualify for Legal Aid’s free services.
While there’s no way to know how many others in the area might have fallen prey to this latest scam that uses US Bank’s name, Ms. Arndt said she doesn’t want others to be duped.
“Too good to be true”
But she admitted that she supplied her phone number to an unnamed company when she got a generic postcard in the mail a couple of weeks ago enticing her with the possibility of “grants” for the elderly to pay for things like medical bills and home improvements.
“I’m like everyone else. My son is out of work with two kids. I’m in Chapter 13 bankruptcy trying to keep my house. We’re all hurting,” Ms. Arndt explained.
According to Ms. Arndt, a man named Casey Cram called her a few days later and told her to go to US Bank in Crossville, Tenn., open an account for $25 and request a “reserve line of credit” for $1,000. He said to call him back this past Friday so he could tell her where to send the money. He said he would use it to pay the “application fee” for a federal grant of $30,000 that she never would have to pay back. As for the money she borrowed from US Bank, he said she could pay back the loan at $25 a month for “very low interest.” But it wouldn’t matter anyway, he said, because she’d have her grant money within 30 days.
A call to the number provided by “Mr. Cram” resulted in no answer. A voice recording indicated the company is called “My Funding Resource” and that it’s in the Mountain time zone.
A US Bank spokeswoman said Friday it was a scam and that these types of frauds will pick “just about any legitimate bank name” to include in the pitch.
“We just always tell our customers the same thing. If it’s too good to be true, it is,” US Bank spokeswoman Amy Frantti said.