Watch: ‘I am impersonating my mother’s scammer to save her’

Four years ago, Maria’s mother went to the post office carrying a shoe box. The 78-year-old told post workers she wanted to send a new pair of shoes to a relative in Belgium.

It was a lie. There were no shoes, just €20,000 in cash she had been discreetly withdrawing from the bank and hoarding at home for weeks. It was only a matter of time until she received a very generous return on her investment, she thought.

Four years and many other payments later, the scammers stole all her savings and her sanity.

Now 82, Maria’s mother developed anxiety and heart problems but refuses to accept she is being scammed, no matter how many times the police and family tell her so.

She continues to entertain pestering messages from her scammers and sometimes still sends them money, believing she will one day get her savings back.

Speaking to Times of Malta with tears in her eyes, her daughter, Maria shared the heartwrenching pain of secretly looking through her mother’s chats with the scammers.

“They drove her insane. They would text her at 3am or 4am,” she said.

“She begs them. She tells them, ‘I don’t have any more money, my heart is racing.’ And they continue to message her.”

And, as a last resort and in a desperate attempt to save her mother, Maria explained how she developed a counter-scam and has been impersonating her mother’s fraudster for months to stop her from sending them money.

Maria knows the money is gone but she is not too concerned about that. She wanted to share her story to help other families and victims who might find themselves in the same trap.

Maria is not her real name, of course. Even though she would have preferred to do the interview showing her name and face, that would have outed her with her mother and ruined her months-long, carefully crafted counter-scam.

And this kind of fraud has unfortunately become very common, according to FCID police inspector Clive Brimmer, and the fraudsters’ favourite targets are often vulnerable, elderly people.

It is also not uncommon for victims to remain in denial, he said, and this scam is just one of a raft of sophisticated and insidious scams that are sweeping the country at the moment.

A message from the relative in Canada

Maria’s ordeal began four years ago when she visited her mother and found her “particularly happy” convinced she was about to receive a €40,000 return on a €20,000 investment.

It sounded too good to be true for Maria but her mother would not give her many details. Eventually, she managed to take her mother’s phone and read her chats.

She discovered her mother had been contacted through Facebook by a close relative in Canada, who claimed to have just received a grant after investing some money and suggested she contact the people behind the scheme.

Her mother often chatted with the relative and did not realise that this time it was not him on the other end. The scammer was using the relative’s real profile, picture and all, and even mimicking their usual language.

When her mother got in touch with the people behind the scheme, their first request was small – an “introduction fee” of €200, which she happily sent via bank transfer.

“The moment they received the money they knew she was vulnerable because she had fallen for the trap,” Maria said.

“The endless manipulation began from then on.”

Cash in a shoe box

Text messages intensified, with other requests for small amounts for “paperwork”, backed by photos of fake documents that made her believe it was real.

Then came the demand for the big sum – the €20,000 investment.

Crucially, the scammers insisted the money must not be sent via bank transfer this time. Such a huge transfer would alert the bank and the government and incur fees and taxes, they told her. The only way was to send the cash.

Maria said, to ensure her compliance, the scammers gave her mother a strict set of rules.

“One of them was to never say anything to her family, especially her children,” Maria explained, adding this was an order she has been manipulated to faithfully obey to this day.

Trust nobody but us- Scammers

They convinced her that her children might steal the money. “Trust nobody but us,” they commanded.

They were also meticulous in their instructions, guiding the elderly woman on how to avoid suspicion at the bank by withdrawing money gradually – €500 here, €1,000 there –for weeks, until she had saved €20,000 cash at home.

The dramatic climax came when they told her to buy a new pair of shoes, replace the shoes in the box with the cash and go to the post office. She was instructed to tell staff it was a pair of shoes she wanted to send to her relative abroad. She even showed them the receipt for the shoes she bought, as proof.

Maria said the parcel, complete with a tracking number, was successfully sent to an address in Belgium, a laundromat, where members of the organised crime group likely waited.

A mythical iron box

Four years later, Maria’s mother has never received her promised funds. Yet, the scammers continue to message her, convincing her she will eventually get the money back, preying on her “shame and guilt”.

They now ask for smaller, more frequent payments, claiming they are for “legal documentation” that needs to be processed before she can receive the money.

On one occasion the scammers even sent her images of an iron box, claiming it contained her money. They told her they sent it to her, complete with a code number, and that it was held up at a police station in Gozo.

Maria’s mother believed them and went to the station to get the box.

“The police told her it couldn’t be true because they never keep people’s money but she wouldn’t believe them,” Maria said.

“She showed them the photos of the box and told them she even has a code for it and accused them of refusing to give it to her.”

To this day, Maria’s mother has not lost hope and the constant stress has taken a serious physical toll on her.

“Her health has deteriorated, she has heart problems, nowadays, she’s very anxious and it’s caused her to develop a tick in her eye. She lost weight and we can’t do anything about it,” her daughter said.

The family reported the case to the police cybercrime unit but the mother’s refusal to accept she was scammed was a major obstacle.

“The scammers convinced her we don’t want the best for her and to only trust them.”

A desperate measure: the counter-scam

In a last-ditch attempt to protect her mother, a few months ago Maria did something she never believed she would do. She found a way to impersonate her mother’s scammer to stop her from sending more money.

“I bought an American sim card and put it in an old phone and I’m messaging my mother from the US number, to appear as if I’m texting from abroad. To her, I’m Rosie,” Maria explained.

Rosie is the name the scammer uses to speak to her mother and Maria has been texting her mother posing as Rosie and telling her to stop sending money because their company is being investigated, their phones stolen and their systems hacked.

“I told her all our old phones were stolen and that this is my new number now.”

The real scammers are still attempting to contact Maria’s mother, of course, but she has a plan for that as well.

My fear is that they steal their identity, that they commit a crime and try to pin it on her identity, because they have all her details- Maria, the victim's daughter

“I’m telling her that if anyone else contacts her on the other numbers, even if they say they’re Rosie, she mustn’t believe them because those are the scammers who stole Rosie’s phone.”

Maria told her mother she must delete all previous information and block her bank cards. Crucially, as the fake Rosie, she told her she will not ask for any more money and ordered her to stop transferring funds.

“And she is believing me,” Maria said, letting out a sigh of relief.

But the fear remains. The scammers have her mother’s ID card, pension details, home address and even photos of her family.

“My fear is that they steal their identity, that they commit a crime and try to pin it on her identity, because they have all her details.”

‘Similar cases on the rise’ – police

The heartbreaking account is, sadly, not unique. Brimmer, who serves in a specialised police financial crime unit, confirmed that this type of online scam is “very common, but often victims are too scared or ashamed to report it”.

He confirmed scams targeting the elderly often begin via convincing social media accounts, promising large profits before slowly escalating pressure for bigger sums, sometimes in “unusual ways like parcels or cash deliveries”.

“They are usually run by international networks of fraudsters working across many countries,” Brimmer said.

“Reports to the police about investment scams, romance scams and similar frauds have gone up a lot in recent years.”

In a Times Talk episode earlier this week, Brimmer said the police are receiving an average of 15 reports about online scams every day.

“Still, many cases are never reported because victims feel too ashamed or don’t trust anyone enough to come forward.”

And investigating the cases is significantly challenging, as the money is usually transferred abroad, requiring lengthy and often complex international cooperation to follow the trail, he said.

“To follow the money and collect evidence, we need international cooperation, which takes a lot of time and does not always work,” he said.

“Even if the money cannot be returned, the police can still identify scam networks and protect others by raising awareness and stopping more people from falling into the trap.”

But the most difficult challenge, he said, is when the victim refuses to cooperate.

“This is the hardest part. Many victims do not want to admit it because they feel ashamed or they still believe they will get the money they were promised,” he said.

“Family members should not judge or attack them because that can push the victim further into the scam. It’s better to speak with empathy and patience.

“Sometimes, unusual methods, like in this case where the daughter pretended to be the scammer, may be the only way to protect the victim. The most important thing is that the family does not give up, stays close to the victim and seeks help from professionals or the authorities when needed.”

Have you been targeted by scammers? For therapeutic support or legal assistance call Victim Support Malta on 21 228333, email info@victimsupport.org.mt , or fill in the referral form on victimsupport.org.mt