About two months ago, Erland Zygmuntowicz answered the phone at his North Ferry Road residence and listened as a person told him something that shook him to his core.
An unidentified stranger said his 28-year-old daughter had been in a serious accident and needed funds immediately. “In the background I heard a girl crying and screaming,” Mr. Zygmuntowicz remembered. “I kept asking, ‘Where is she? Is she all right?’”
But then the story changed, and he was told, “Your daughter was in the wrong place at the wrong time” and had witnessed a drug transaction. “Say a word about this and she’ll be dead,” he was told, and was then given instructions to get $5,000 and leave the Island for a location to exchange the money for his daughter.
But Mr. Zygmuntowicz’s wife, Anne Danforth, had been listening to the conversation as well, and went to her laptop and soon found that their daughter was in no danger whatsoever.
The couple were in the audience of an event hosted by Shelter Island Senior Services and the Police Department at the Community Center on Oct. 20 discussing criminal scams that prey on people. With lunch provided by Slice restaurant, the attendees were educated on scams and taken through the steps criminals use via phone, email and…
