We have a customer who received a call that a family member was in jail and needed money. The customer was going to wire the funds, but one of our tellers told the customer that this sounded like a scam and called the phone number that was given to the customer. Turns out it was a scam, the customer did not wire the funds, but my question is who should the customer contact to report this? I don't think we can report it because we would have to share non-public personal information about the customer. I called the local police department, and they told me the customer was welcome to file a complaint, but really there is nothing that they can do?????? So who do people call to report this to? Thanks.

Since these calls often originate internationally using disposable cel-phone numbers for callbacks, there is little local law enforcement can do. If we have a customer who feels strongly about "letting someone know" I refer them to the Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Complaint Assistant. The information they input is placed in a database that federal law enforcement can access and look for common MOs. The best way to prevent this type of fraud is to simply hang up.

PS, Kudos to your teller for not simply being an "order taker" and asking the right questions to protect your customer from a significant loss.

A Google search on "grandson scam" will give you a list of news reports of individual's who unfortuantely were not so lucky.

More information on the "Grandparent Scam"

Grandparent Scam

My parents got a call like this. Luckily my father (90 years old) handed the phone to my mother (87 years old) and she knew it was a scam and told them so. Dad couldn't understand what the caller was saying and thought it was his granddaughter's husband.