NAMPA, Idaho — Nampa Albertsons manager Janeal Dowalo overheard a customer on the phone while she was checking another person out. The customer, feeding stacks of $100 bills into the Coinstar machine, was in the process of being scammed.
- Albertsons staff prevented a customer from losing nearly $3,000 to a phone scam.
- The customer was on the phone with who they say was a sheriff and was paying because of an alleged warrant for their arrest.
- Detective Corporal Joe Woodward of NPD says, "No bank is going to ask you to do that. No government official is going to ask you to do that."
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
Albertsons Front End Manager Janeal Dowalo was checking out a customer as usual when a person's conversation on the phone caught her attention. The conversation was not usual.
"He was talking on the phone when he came in and he had a stack of money with him," she says.
Little did she know she was about to prevent him from being scammed out of almost $3,000 at the Coinstar machine. The customer explained they were on the phone with a sheriff and that he was sending them money because there was a warrant for his arrest.
"And I [ask], 'who are you sending that money to?' And as soon as he said 'the sheriff's office,' I stopped the machine and told him that he was being scammed."
Nampa Police Department's Detective Corporal Joel Woodward tells me that, "Anytime somebody asks you to deposit money into a Bitcoin ATM or any crypto ATM is an immediate red flag. No bank is going to ask you to do that. No government official is going to ask you to do that."
Crypto scams, while newer in the last few years, follow the same setups.
"You have romance scams, online fraud type of situations, people pretending to be a government employee or police officer or somebody like that saying you have a warrant for your arrest or things that are just not true," Woodward adds.
The outcome that Janeal created is rare.
"Super rare. You know, in the case of the Albertsons case, the employee was, you know, hero of the day," Woodward says.
Oftentimes the victim is able to submit money to scammers. With scammers frequently being outside of the country, the focus is getting victims back their money. Albertson's employees are made aware of signs of common scams and false payment methods. One of the most common payments methods are Apple iTunes cards — safeguards through Albertson's also put in place.
"The system, they've got it down to where they can only do two," Dowalo explains, "But they're usually $500 at a time. So $1,000 at one shot. So we usually ask the customer, because it's so common, what are they using it for? What are they buying it for?"
