BOSTON (WHDH) - David Martin would do anything for his granddaughter Alex, so he jumped into action when he thought she was calling him begging for help.
“She had a cut lip, supposedly, and a broken nose,” says Martin. “She had hit a woman that was pregnant. The baby and the woman were in the hospital.”
The young woman on the phone said she was stuck in a Massachusetts jail cell.
David, who lives in Kentucky, believed it was his granddaughter calling.
“It sounded just like my granddaughter,” says Martin. “I told the girl, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of it; I’ll help you out – I’ll get you out of there.”
The woman asked him to call her lawyer, and she gave him the number.
‘He said Alex, she doesn’t have her phone and she can’t talk. Her bond was set at $9,000 and they hoped to get charges dismissed,” says Martin.
The man told David to withdraw $9,000 from his bank and use UPS to overnight the cash to an address in Dorchester.
“It’s my retirement money,” says Martin. “He just kept telling me this stuff so fast, that I didn’t have time to even think about a scam.”
David did what the man said, never thinking he was being tricked.
Hours later, he called his granddaughter.
“She’s at school in Lexington, Kentucky. I said oh lord I been scammed. I knew right away.”
He spent hours trying to get his money back.
“I worked from 11 to 6, 7 in the morning calling UPS, called the sheriff’s department, called Boston Police 5 times, trying to stop that package,” says Martin.
David says UPS sent him this copy of a note that was placed on his account saying “Do not release to anyone, person who shipped was scammed.”
He says the company told him that notation was made at 11:38 p-m.
“I thought, well – maybe I saved myself. I called UPS 4 more times, 5 more times,” says Martin. “The final person told me, it will not be delivered, I guarantee you that.”
But the money was delivered, at 7:30 the next morning.
“I just say UPS let me down.”
David’s local law enforcement agency in Kentucky investigated what happened.
Deputies say UPS told them a note wasn’t put on the account until 12 minutes after the money had been delivered.
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