A woman from Ohio’s Westlake was scammed out of around $1,22,000 by someone pretending to be former Journey vocalist Steve Perry. According to Westlake police, the 75 year old woman stopped by the station last night to report the incident.
This January, the woman met the fake Perry through messenger. He claimed to have a “business opportunity for investment” and “needed a woman in his life”, as per police sources. Soon he got the woman sending him money as they kept in touch through text messages and WhatsApp.
By the time the victim became aware, the scammer had managed to prompt her to transfer $ 1,22,000 from her account. Out of this, $ 72,000 was in the form of wire transfers to “various persons in various different states, designated by ‘Perry,’ through her bank,” as per the police reports. As of the remaining $ 50,000 , they were in the form of gift cards which the victim bought, induced by the fake Steve Perry.
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The scammer gradually became more demanding and started asking for pictures of passports and driver’s licenses. This raised the victim’s suspicion. The Westlake police asked the victim to report the scam to her bank along with IC3.gov, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
As investigators are working on the case to trace the victim, we should remember that this is not the only recent case of this kind, unfortunately. Last year October, someone pretended to be BeeGees’ Barry Gibb and scammed a woman out of $11,000. We can only hope these kind of instances get rarer day by day with more news reports and legal action against such frauds.
