The 26-year-old has been charged with second-degree grand theft
A Florida man has been charged with second-degree grand theft after scamming an elderly woman out of $30,000 using an online pop-up.
On March 21, 2022, the unnamed 71-year-old victim saw a pop-up appear on her computer telling her to call an 800 number, which told her that her phone had been hacked and now had Trojan spyware.
The caller also claimed that the woman’s social security number had been compromised and that there was a pending transaction on her bank account from the crypto platform Coinbase, per WIOD .
The woman was instructed to send $29,035 to an account, allowing the bank to deliver her information about her new account. She would also be sent a cashier’s check for the wired amount.
Of course, the whole thing turned out to be a scam but thankfully, investigators tracked the wired money and found it ended up in an account controlled by Alexis Gonzalez-Rodriguez.
The Pembroke Pines Police Department arrested the 26-year-old and he remains in the Broward Main Jail on a $10,000 bond. Gonzalez-Rodriguez’s attorney pleaded not guilty on his behalf.