Life insurance scam targets local widows

It seemed simple enough. Shortly after her husband of 46 years died earlier this month, Irene Schell got a phone call from a woman who informed her that her husband had a life insurance policy.

But there was a catch. The policy was delinquent, the woman on the phone told her, and Schell would need to pay back premiums of $2,596 to get the payout of $35,000. She was instructed to load the money onto prepaid debit cards purchased at Safeway and send them off via FedEx.

It wasn’t until Schell went to Safeway on Tuesday with cash in hand that she realized she was being scammed.

“Like a fool, I dashed down to my bank and got it in cash,” she said. “I think I saw the dollar signs. I didn’t use good judgment.”

Schell got a dose of good luck. The Safeway she visited at Monroe and Francis no longer sells the type of card the scammers instructed her to get and when the anxious woman told her story to the store manager, he told her she was being scammed.

The woman on the phone said the premiums had been paid by her husband’s Social Security until 2012. It sounded odd to Schell, but the woman said she was with Prudential Life Insurance and Schell had been a client for decades. She also was devastated by the loss of her husband.

“I can’t believe I did that,” she said. “You just don’t have your head together.”

Schell called a local Prudential insurance agent on Tuesday, who told her she was the third woman he’d heard from that day with the same story. Alarmed, he alerted the Washington Insurance Commissioner’s Office.

So far the scam hasn’t been reported in other areas, said Insurance Commissioner’s Office spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis.

“We’ve only heard about it in the Spokane area,” she said. “It may just be that we haven’t heard from anybody in other parts of the state yet.”

Marquis said her office can look up anyone and see if they have a valid life insurance policy. Inquiries can be made at (800) 562-6900.

“It’s really very troubling that people are doing this,” she said.

The state of Georgia reported a rash of similar calls to widows recently, and would-be victims said the calls came from an Alabama number. All three women who reported the scam in Eastern Washington also reported receiving the calls from an Alabama number.

Another woman from Eastern Washington whose husband died this month said she got nearly an identical call last week from a woman who said if she paid $2,500 in back premiums she would get $40,000 in return. Margaret, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of being targeted for more scams, said the caller told her she would transfer her to Social Security so she could get more information. Margaret went through what seemed to be an automated system requesting that she push various numbers.

She eventually talked to a man who called himself Steve who also tried to sell her on the scam.

“No matter what number I pressed I was going to get that man that was probably sitting across the desk from her,” said Margaret, who lives in Okanogan County.

The scammers eventually hung up after Margaret pestered them with questions.

“I wasn’t falling for it to the point where I was going to send the money,” she said. “I was just trying to figure out what was going on. I feel very fortunate. It’s very frightening how good they can sound.”

Both women said they thought the scammers used information from their husband’s obituaries published in local newspapers to make their calls more believable.

Though all three women were contacted on the same day, the scam appears to have been going on for a while. Paula Davis, a funeral director at Heritage Funeral Home, said one of their clients got a similar phone call about three months ago.

“She had the money and was headed to send it off when her brother-in-law got wind of it and stopped it,” she said.

The scammers also requested that the women send a copy of their husband’s death certificate, which Davis warns against because it is a treasure trove of information needed to steal someone’s identity.

Life insurance companies never require beneficiaries to pay money to get a payout, she said.

“You never, ever have to pay to file a claim,” she said. “They have to pay you.”

Schell said she is willing to speak about her experience because she doesn’t want anyone else to be taken in.

“Maybe somewhere along the line they’ll get caught,” she said.