A Brooklyn woman is out $35,000 after what police say started as a phone call about an iPad purchase and ended with two strangers walking away with $35,000 in cash. The NYPD is now searching for the two men accused of pulling off the elaborate impersonation scheme, after an incident that began September 25.
According to News12 Brooklyn, the ordeal began when the victim received a call from someone claiming to represent Walmart about an iPad purchase. From there, police say the call was transferred to individuals claiming to represent the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Department of Justice — a layering tactic designed to make the scam feel official and escalating.
The callers allegedly told the woman that an abandoned vehicle had been linked to her name, according to the outlet's reporting, and then instructed her to withdraw money from her bank account pending an investigation. Investigators say she withdrew $35,000 and handed the cash to two men after being told it would be returned once the matter was resolved. The men then ran off with the money, per the same account.
A Scam Pattern Showing Up Across Brooklyn
This is not an isolated case in the borough. The Brooklyn District Attorney's office recently detailed a similar scheme that landed a Sunset Park man in prison: a caller falsely claiming to be a United States Marshal told a Williamsburg woman there was an arrest warrant out for her and demanded money to clear it, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney. That victim was directed to withdraw $13,000, which two unidentified men collected at her home in July 2025. The Sunset Park man was ultimately sentenced to one and a half to four and a half years in prison in that case.
In the cases described here, couriers collected cash in person. A Frisco, Texas resident handed over $30,000 in a comparable scam and was later asked for another $22,000, according to a report from Yahoo News. In that case, scammers posed as officials from the Social Security Administration's fraud division and pressured the victim to move her savings into cash. A bank manager intervened when she tried to withdraw the additional $22,000 and told her she was being scammed, after which Frisco police supplied her with counterfeit money for a staged handoff and caught the courier.
Federal Officials Warn of Rising Losses
The Social Security Administration has been actively warning the public about these calls. In a blog post dated September 25, the agency noted that the Federal Trade Commission received more than 375,000 reports about government-impersonation scams in 2025 from people who collectively lost more than $900 million, according to ssa.gov.
Separate FTC analysis found a more than four-fold increase since 2020 in reports from older adults who said they lost $10,000 or more — sometimes their entire life savings — to scammers impersonating trusted government officials, per the Federal Trade Commission. The agency's more recent data show people reported losing $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025 overall, with reported losses nearly tripling since 2020.
The scale of these operations can be significant. A broader investigation tied to similar impersonation schemes identified more than 200 victims and resulted in more than 40 indictments as of September 4, according to the Yahoo News report cited above.
NYPD Still Searching for Two Men
The NYPD is searching for two men in connection with the Brooklyn case. Crime Stoppers has requested that anyone with information call 1-800-577-TIPS as the search continues.
