[NJ, USA] Wife got scammed $36K.
My wife got a phone call from a number that claimed that they are a government officials from Livingston Police Department in New Brunswick, saying that she failed to appear for a grand jury duty so there’s a warrant out for that and for holding contempt of the court.
They claimed to have a signed certified Mail saying that she will show up; they told her that she can just go to the station and verify the signature to clear her name, but before she does that, she has to satisfy a federal and state fees for failure to appear in a grand jury court, and a fee for being held in contempt of the court.
They told her that she has a gag order so she wasn’t allowed to say anything not even to me as her husband and when she went through money from the bank, they told her to just tell the teller that it’s for home improvement. They told her to keep the phone on her all night so they can monitor her because she has that gag order so she was scared to even say anything to me and the next morning they got disconnected and then she called the Livingston police department and they told her that it was a scam and that’s when she realized.
They texted her fake warrants for her and fake gag order letters. They really got into her head.
They convinced her once she pays the court fees and she goes there to exonerate her name the government will give you your money back.
She went to the bank a few times and did three bitcoin atm deposit after the scammer sent her a QR code for their wallet.
She was about to deposit $28k but the phone was disconnected and that’s when she somehow had an inkling.
I’m trying my best to be graceful because she feels terrible and stupid already but I myself am still absorbing this.
Like she was ready to just take out all of our money She took out our kids savings too.
Crying in front of the bank she wants to take out a $40K loan and give the money back and just move out and disappear. I let her calm down, go home and eat, and we deal with our kids normally.
Later, I told her that this one incident doesn’t define who she is and that the scammer robbed us from our money and our children’s money but I refuse to let the scammer rob our dignity as well.
Not much we can do to be honest except to just live with our mistakes and learn from them.
It sucks.