Teen Falls for Scam Dealing with Fake Government Grant in Murfreesboro

Sep 12, 2013 at 04:30 am by bryan


The ole’ government grant scam is still making news. The most recent scheme involved a Murfreesboro victim who told police he received a phone call by someone claiming to be A.J. Sean with the U.S. Government Grants Department (there is no government office with that title). The A.J. fella told the victim that he was approved for a $10,000 grant.

The victim claims the person on the other end of the line told him he needed to obtain a “Green Dot Visa” and place $100 on the card. A supervisor at the fictitious government office then got on the phone and told the victim to put another $550 on the card. The make believe supervisor was named “Jennifer Baxter,” according to an incident report.

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The 19-year old victim fell for the hoax and bought the Green Dot card. He sent the card to the Baxter woman and she later told him to get another card for $900. The victim later called mom and she informed her son that he was scammed and he needed to call the M-P-D.

At this point police have two phone numbers that belong to the scammers, but that is all they have to go by. No arrests have been made. WGNS called both numbers and we were met by a recorded message telling us the numbers were “non-working number.”

Similar scams have been reported in Smyrna and Manchester, Tennessee.

Source:

MPD Incident Report #13-18126

 

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