Grandparents tricked into mailing thousands to men in ruse about grandkids, feds say

Grandparents were tricked into sending five men thousands of dollars in cash through UPS and FedEx packages, according to federal officials. Now, those men have been charged in what officials are calling a “mail fraud scheme.”

The grandparents received fraudulent phone calls regarding their grandchildren’s arrests by callers who said they “were in immediate need of money,” according to a Jan. 13 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The callers posed as the grandkids or as their public defender.

Officials say the five men, all living in the Bronx, then traveled from New York to pick up the UPS and FedEx packages filled with money at various addresses, including in Luzerne and Lackawanna County. Those package pickups took place from July through October 2020.

All five men, ranging in age from 19 to 27, were indicted by a federal grand jury in connection to “a mail fraud scheme that targeted older victims and fraudulently induced them to send money through the mail under false pretenses,” the release says.

A defense attorney representing one of the men told McClatchy News she “can’t comment on an open case.” The defense attorneys representing three of the men did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the fifth man’s defense attorney was not publicly made available.

If they are convicted of the charges, they each face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a supervised release period following their prison sentence and a fine.

This story was originally published January 14, 2022 at 11:52 AM with the headline "Grandparents tricked into mailing thousands to men in ruse about grandkids, feds say."