A 75-year-old woman from Mesa has lost her life savings after falling for an online scam that left her out of $25,000, which she believed was being transferred to a safe account to protect against hackers. Susan Guthrie, the victim, explained the ordeal that began with a deceitful pop-up message that appeared to come from Microsoft, according to FOX 10 Phoenix.
In what turned to be a sophisticated ruse, the scammers convinced Guthrie that her bank account had been infiltrated, directing her to deposit her money into a cryptocurrency account to safeguard it. "I never should have done that. I should have just turned off my computer," Guthrie told FOX 10 Phoenix. Meanwhile, her daughter Sarah said she was devastated and overwhelmed upon discovering the situation.
Guthrie's trust in the supposed tech and banking professionals she interacted with online and over the phone played right into the con artists' hands. "They walked me through what I now realize was they were just [putting in] the right code, so they could take control of my computer," Guthrie said. The Mesa Police have stated that tracking down the stolen funds is next to impossible due to the lack of identifiable information about the criminals or the location of the crypto account, as reported by FOX 10 Phoenix.
Guthrie's story, also chronicled by AZ Family, highlights her financial and emotional turmoil. "He had me on speaker for probably 4 hours talking me through the whole shmear things, reassuring me along the way," Paasche-Guthrie told AZ Family. Despite her bank's position that the loss is not covered by insurance, the community has rallied to her aid with a GoFundMe that has amassed just under $20,000 to help alleviate the impact of the scam.
