In the spring of 2023, a Google search changed Fran Westbrook’s life.
The 85-year-old was sitting in the living room of her home in Hemet, California, thinking about her sister, who had died the year before. Mrs. Westbrook decided to look up her obituary. When she clicked on a link to it, her screen froze.
“Do not turn off your computer,” a loud voice said through her speakers. A 1-800 number popped up—so Mrs. Westbrook picked up the phone, and dialed it.
The person on the other end of the line greeted her, explained that he was a Microsoft support administrator, then told her: At that very moment, her computer had 39 hackers. “Very often, when your computer gets hacked, your bank account gets hacked too,” the person said—before saying he would patch Mrs. Westbrook through to the fraud department at her bank. Then another voice came on the line. It told her there were clear signs her accounts had been compromised, and her money was being stolen, but everything would be okay. The criminals could be caught red-handed, the voice said, if only Mrs. Westbrook would help.
If you were in this situation, alarm bells would probably go off in your head. There were a lot of red flags: A Microsoft administrator would never patch you through to your bank, for example. But Mrs. Westbrook was born in 1937. She was in her 70s before she began using the internet, and in her ninth decade when she became the victim of a scam that thousands of elderly Americans are falling for.
It went like this: The second voice on the phone told her that he was a high-level executive at Chase Bank—and that he believed his employees, far down the chain of command, were participating in fraudulent activity. He told Mrs. Westbrook not to talk to anyone about the situation: This is a serious matter of law enforcement, and you must keep it to yourself. Then he told her to go to her local Chase branch, withdraw a cashier’s check for $20,000, and send it to a company in New York.
Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission warned of “a growing wave of scams aimed squarely at retirees’ life savings.” Seniors accounted for nearly $5 billion in reported scam losses in 2024, up 32 percent from 2023.
She did this multiple times over the next few weeks, the amounts increasing each time until, one day, she asked to withdraw $80,000. The teller was suspicious. Why such a large, unusual withdrawal? Mrs. Westbrook had been trained by the voice on the phone for this very moment, and she said: “The money is for a home renovation.” But the teller wasn’t convinced. She told Mrs. Westbrook to contact a trusted family member.
That’s when Ken Westbrook, a 69-year-old retired CIA agent living in Virginia, got a call from his mother. By the time he hung up, he discovered that she had lost $277,000—nearly all her life’s savings.
