Danville grandmother scammed out of life savings ends up in hospital

DANVILLE, Ky. (ABC 36 NEWS NOW) — Barbara Warner, a 74-year-old grandmother from Danville, received an email from who she through was the Inspector General for the Social Security Administration. The email contained many threats and a non-disclosure agreement.

“If you tell your family, you’re going to go to prison,” Barbara’s grandson Stephen Warner said describing the email. “He was also impersonating an actual federal employee so that made it a little more tricky. So, that led to him convincing her that her assets had to be frozen.”

He says this all happened in late January of this year. Barbara had just sold her home and was ready to move closer to family in Danville.

“We’re assuming, because that’s public record, that’s how they knew she had just come into this amount of money,” Stepehen said.

After several phone calls, emails and texts, Stephen says his fear-induced grandma drove to Lexington to buy nearly $180,000 worth of gold as instructed by the scammer.

“And then she met him in a Chase Bank parking lot in Lexington which is even scarier,” he said.

Stephen says the scammer allegedly made her carry a box with more than 20 pounds of gold coins to his car in the parking lot.

“The FBI, finally involved, said that that’s kind of unique in the sense that a lot of these are done electronically,” he said.

After the exchange, Barbara tried contacting who she thought was the Social Security office, only to realize the emails and numbers had been disconnected.

Barbara then reached out to her family, who took the situation to the FBI. Unfortunately, there was nothing anyone could do to get that money back.

“Up until that point, that’s all she knew, was that she had lost everything and there was no help for her,” Stephen said. “So, that’s when she unfortunately decided she would be better off not here, or we would better off if she wasn’t here, thinking this mess would kind of go away or we wouldn’t have to worry about her so much.”

For six days, Barbara was on a ventilator in a coma. As of yesterday, Stephen says she’s off the ventilator and in good spirits. She’s thankful for the support of her family and her community and hopeful that the FBI will catch these scammers.

“She kind of has woken up with a new outlook on life which we’re grateful for and she’s grateful for,” Stephen said.

To help Barbara rebuild, you can visit the link to this GoFundMe to donate.