Does Your Grandson Really Need Bail Money? Beware the 'Grandparent Scam'

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Vermont officials have charged 25 Canadians for participating in a "Grandparent Scam" that defrauded elderly Americans out of $21 million from their retirement savings.

The individuals placed calls from call centers in and around Montreal, Québec, between summer 2021 and June 4, 2024. On the calls, a first group of scammers (the "openers") pretended to be the elderly victim's relative, typically a grandchild, and said they'd been arrested and needed bail money. They told the victims they could not tell anyone about the arrest because of a gag order.

The "openers" had spreadsheets containing the personal identifying information of the elderly US individual, such as their name, phone number, age, and estimated household income. Once they had successfully convinced the victim that their relative had been arrested, they passed the call off to other co-conspirators, the "closers," who posed as attorneys ("the handoff").

The closers then instructed the victim to procure the "bail money" and either send it to a certain address, usually a vacant property identified through a real estate website, or provide it to an individual who came to their home posing as a bail bondsman. They then informed one of the group's leaders, Usman Khalid (aka "Paul" and "Pauly"), who identified a co-conspirator who could pose as a bail bondsman in the US and told them how much to collect.

All 25 defendants are in their 20s and 30s, operating under nicknames like "Toast" and "Blondie." The scam targeted people in more than 40 states across the US.

Law enforcement busted the operation on June 4 when they executed search warrants at several call centers. When they arrived, they caught the defendants in the act of placing phone calls to elderly victims in Virginia. The truck of one of the operation's leaders, Ricky Ylimaki (aka "Ruffles"), was full of cell phones and lists of victims in multiple states, the indictment says.

"Individuals working in the call centers were sometimes moved from one call center to another to improve the chemistry between openers and closers and to increase the success of the Grandparent Scam," reads the indictment. "Members of the conspiracy referred to these reassignments as 'switches.'"

If no faux bail bondsmen were available to collect money at a victim's home, the organization sometimes called cars via rideshare companies, instructing unsuspecting drivers to pick up the money and deliver it to one of the scammers. They then transmitted the money to Canada, obscuring the source of the money and the defendants' identities, sometimes using cryptocurrency.

Sometimes, the scammers called the elderly victims back and told them they needed more money because the bail had increased. Victims who reliably provided substantial sums of money were referred to as "whales." Hundreds of retirees were defrauded "of their life savings by preying on their emotions and deceiving them into thinking that their loved ones were in peril," says Thomas Demeo, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Boston Field Office.

If convicted, the alleged managers of the call center face 40 years imprisonment. Officials believe they are Gareth West (aka "Buddy" and "Muscles"), Usman Khalid (aka "Paul" and "Pauly"), Andrew Tatto (aka "Chevy" and "Truck"), Stephan Moskwyn (aka "HK"), and Ricky Ylimaki (aka "Ruffles"). The rest face up to 20 years.

This is not the first time officials have arrested individuals connected to this same operation. Nine others were charged in the past. They were located around the world, including Miami, New York, Montréal, China, and Los Angeles.

Anyone can report similar instances to the National Elder Fraud Hotline (833-FRAUD-11). This hotline is a free resource created by the US Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime, for people to report fraud against anyone age 60 or older.