A Florida man has been charged with second-degree grand theft for defrauding an elderly woman out of $30,000 via an online pop-up.
On March 21, 2022, the unnamed 71-year-old victim noticed a pop-up on her computer instructing her to call an 800 number, which informed her that her phone had been hacked and now contained Trojan spyware.
The caller also claimed that the woman’s social security number had been compromised and that a transaction from Coinbase was pending on her bank account.
The woman was instructed to transfer $29,035 to an account so that the bank could send her information about her new account. She would also receive a cashier’s check for the wired amount.
Of course, the entire operation was a scam, but thankfully, investigators tracked the wired funds and discovered they ended up in an account controlled by 26-year-old Alexis Gonzalez-Rodriguez.
The Pembroke Pines Police Department arrested the 26-year-old and booked him into the Broward County Main Jail on a $10,000 bond Tuesday.