HENRICO, Va. (WWBT) – A Henrico woman called 12 On Your Side after she and her husband lost thousands to scammers. The couple wants to help and warn others who may not be tech savvy.
It all started with a strange screen on Karen Geiges’ computer, telling her to call a number for help. Calling the number led to conversations with scammers who convinced them to buy $21,000 in gift cards.
“I said call the number, we called the number and we got a guy named Harvey,” she explained. “He said ‘we called you at 4 in the morning, two times, to make sure you had OK’d a 21,000 dollar charge for child pornography on the phone,’ he said ‘you did that right?’ My husband and I said of course not, no we didn’t.”
Geiges and her husband admit they are not great with technology and they were fearful after speaking with “Harvey.” They were later led to believe they were talking to Ally bank to get rid of the so called fraudulent charges.
“He said ‘we try to get the same amount of money as a duplication, so when the banks see there is another charge of the same amount, the bank will flag it and take the charge off,’ she said. “He said we only have a certain amount of time to do this. He told me Target, Lowes, JCPenney and Sephora were the cards I had to buy. They were special cards encrypted, and the bank knows about these cards.”
Geiges proceeded to panic buy hundreds of gift cards for the stores, mainly buying them from grocery stores. She said they were told…
