APPLETON (NBC 26) — Appleton Police are crediting an employee at a local credit union with helping prevent a scam that targeted an elderly woman.
Police said in a Facebook post on Saturday that a patron had recently arrived at the credit union with instructions printed off from a home computer detailing how to transfer a very large sum of money to a suspicious bank account.
Appleton Police said an astute banking representative developed concerns that the elderly patron was being scammed and contacted the police.
After interviewing the employee and the patron, police determined that it was an actual scam. Police said the person was being targeted by an unknown individual falsely identifying themselves. According to police, this scammer had already obtained some banking information and had moved money around in the victim's accounts.
The credit union had already assisted in returning the victim's money to their original accounts, police said, closing any compromised accounts and creating new ones, as well as freezing access to the online banking accounts until a new password could be established.
The police officer who arrived at the call also educated the victim about scams and addressed ways to safeguard against other scams in the future.
"This Saturday we wanted to give a shoutout to the observant, well-informed, and caring credit union representative who alerted our officers as to the suspected issue at hand, and assisted the targeted woman in restoring her finances without suffering any losses," police said in a post.
