Benjamin Alexander, 43, of Sudbury pleaded guilty to fraud over $5,000 after a Coniston senior was drained through two phone calls in three days. The court ordered restitution. The machine behind the calls did not stop.
Xin Liu was the hand at the door. The voice on the phone was someone else, somewhere else, and the cash she collected over eight days in July had a name on it that belonged to a woman who thought she was saving her grandson.
A Cleveland man pleaded guilty in a transnational scheme that turned ride-share drivers into unwitting cash couriers and grandchildren's voices into the lock that opened a generation's savings accounts. The machine ran from October through January. The drivers never knew what they were carrying.
A Romanian woman was arrested in Békés County on suspicion of collecting cash and gold from elderly Hungarians who believed their sons were in jail. She was the last link in a chain that started with a phone call and ended at a stranger's front door.
Stefano Zanetti ran the money end of a grandparent scam from an oceanfront house in Panama while retirees in Pittsburgh handed cash to strangers at their front doors. In May 2026, a U.S. federal judge gave him 188 months.
On a March afternoon in Tuscany Ride Close, a Calgary woman withdrew nearly $5,000 in cash because a voice on the phone said her grandson was in jail. The man who came to her door wore the costume of a detective who did not exist.