By LESLIE EIKLEBERRY
Salina Post
A Saline County man is out $30,000 after falling for a texting scam involving an alleged woman.
Saline County Sheriff's Captain Jim Hughes said this morning that an elderly Saline County man started a texting conversation with someone claiming to be a woman. At first, the conversation was just friendly chat between two people who supposedly had being older and lonely in common, he said.
Then the alleged woman began discussing visiting the man and even possibly moving to Saline County. The alleged woman also began asking for money. Initially, the man wired $1,000 to the alleged woman, and then began wiring multiple increments of money via Western Union until the total reached $30,000, Hughes said. At that point, the fraud department of the man's bank took notice and intervened.
Hughes said that in this type of scam, the scammer most often will take on a role that is gender opposite from that of the person being scammed, playing on the emotions of the person being scammed.
Regardless of how nice people seem, Hughes said it is important to remember to not wire money to people you don't know. If someone asks you to wire money or to purchase gift cards and then provide the card numbers, it's a scam.