CHELMSFORD, Mass. —

When 85-year-old Chelmsford resident Janice Peltz got a phone call from her bank about a fraud issue, she believed them and followed every instruction they gave.

"That was what suckered me in," Peltz said.

But it was not TD Bank on the end of the line; it was a scammer.

The scammer, who kept Peltz on the phone for hours, directed her to the bank, where she took out $18,000 in cash.

"He said, 'I don't want you to tell anybody. We don't know who was doing this, and we don't know if it's somebody in the bank or it could be even somebody you know,'" Peltz said.

She then drove to Village Variety in Lowell, where she deposited the cash into a Bitcoin Depot ATM. She did it one bill at a time and said it took around three hours to complete.

"Being of an elder age, I didn

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