Fraud Wars: Fake ‘Amazon Fraud Protection’ Call Kicked Off Frightening Fraud Scheme

Criminals stole nearly $400,000 from Mary Ellen Strange during a monthslong scam. She’s now committed to helping others avoid similar crimes

Ken Budd,

AARP

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Published December 31, 2025

The dog was barking and chasing the carpet cleaners in Mary Ellen Strange’s home. Maybe that’s why she answered her phone. Maybe it was the chaos and noise.

“I don’t answer phone calls from numbers that I don’t recognize, but in all the commotion, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and I just grabbed it,” she says, recollecting that day in June 2024.

The caller claimed to be from Amazon’s fraud detection unit. She asked if Strange, a 76-year-old widow in Indiana, had purchased a laptop computer and shipped it to New York. Strange said no. The caller then said her name was linked to a money laundering scheme.

“Someone in your name attempted to embezzle $94,000 in cash over the border,” the woman said, adding that many driver’s licenses and credit cards had been opened in her name.

Strange hung up. But later she thought: What if someone had accessed her Amazon account?

She Googled “Amazon fraud detection unit,” and a number popped up. Unbeknownst to Strange, the fraud unit was fake. She called and spoke with a man who repeated the money laundering charges, adding that it looked as though she had also bought child pornography online.

“He said, ‘Wow. These are some serious federal crimes,’ ” Strange says.

He transferred her to Felix Edwards, an officer with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Edwards gave her two options. The first: The government would press charges and issue arrest warrants. She would need to hire an attorney, and the court case might last five to eight years. Option two: The officer would confirm her accounts were legitimate and clear the charges. But she couldn’t tell anyone. And she had to move fast.

“I felt like I didn’t have any choice but to make a decision before we hung up the phone,” she says.

She chose option two. Complete confidentiality.

“We trust no one,” Edwards, the supposed FTC officer, said.

She would later wish she hadn’t trusted him either.

The scam progresses

Edwards promised to set up a meeting with his colleagues. They would need Strange to withdraw money to “document” it and prove it was hers. The U.S. Treasury Department would then reimburse her. She would also receive a new Social Security card and a certificate absolving her of the charges. It was an alternative dispute resolution process, he said. He had done this many times. It always turned out fine.

She believed him. Over the course of the summer, starting in June 2024, the two spoke by phone every day, typically two to three times a day.

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“He knew my schedule,” Strange says. “He would know what time I was going to Pilates, and he’d be on the phone 15 minutes later when I was done…. He was always checking in on me and making sure I was OK.”

Edwards sent her to ATMs and Bitcoin machines (and walked her through the steps by phone), to Walmart to buy prepaid gift cards, and to CVS for Target cards and prepaid Visa cards. He also arranged three pickups that summer.

First, she withdrew $30,000 from various bank accounts, placing the package in the back seat of a car supposedly belonging to an undercover FBI agent. The following month, she converted money into gold coins. The third pickup was gold bars.

“As I saw that car going down the road, I remember thinking: Dear God, please tell me I’ve done the right thing. I pray that’s not my life savings going down the road,” she says. “And that’s exactly what it was.”

At one point, Edwards said, “We need to document your annuities.” And she wept. “I can’t pull that money out. I just can’t,” she told him, then hung up.

But when they spoke the next day, Strange said, “I’m better today…. Let’s get this done and over with.”

The two annuities were worth about $270,000 combined. Edwards told her to empty one and leave $100,000 in the other so she wouldn’t arouse suspicion that she was planning to flee.

“There probably was always that question in my mind: Is this real?” Strange says. “But I could not fathom that it was fraud.”

The terrible truth is revealed

In August 2024, Edwards said that the government would be locking down her accounts that weekend. He instructed her to use her remaining money to pay off whatever she owed — primarily her mortgage and a car payment. He also told her to keep $2,000 for gas and groceries until she received a check compensating her for the money she’d withdrawn. He would be meeting with his colleagues on Monday, he said.

During that weekend, she became suspicious. She was transferring money to lower the car loan’s balance, but how could that occur if the government locked her accounts?

And yet the money was transferred. “I started to get a little nervous. I thought: It doesn’t look to me like they locked my accounts down,” she says.

That weekend, Edwards suddenly went silent. She didn’t hear from him on Monday. That’s when she knew.

It’s not real, she thought. And I’ve lost everything.

The aftermath

In just two months, the criminals stole about $378,000. Strange then suffered another blow: She owed close to $100,000 in federal taxes for the money taken from her annuities.

“I think I cried harder than when the scam became obvious. because I felt like that’s a second gut punch from my own government,” she says.

She was devastated. One of her brothers sent her news articles about fraud, and she felt a bit better, realizing that she wasn’t alone.

Strange enjoys golf, and when a fellow golfer asked why they hadn’t seen her that summer, she shared what had happened. Weeks later, the woman called. “She said, Would you mind sharing your story with the lady golfers?” Strange says. “They don’t want it to happen to them.”

Strange has since spoken to many groups about her experience, including an audience through the U.S. Department of Justice’s Elder Fraud Initiative. She also participates in an online support group through AARP’s Fraud Watch Network. On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., she lobbied Indiana’s U.S. senators and representatives to change the tax laws that punish scam victims. Helping others to avoid scams is her new mission.

“I tend to be a very positive person and upbeat and joyful most days,” Strange says. “I end my talk with: If I can prevent this from happening to any one of you, then that will be my legacy.”

What she learned

Don’t Google customer service numbers. “They may be fraudulent. That’s what led me down the rabbit hole,” Strange says. Instead, go directly to a company’s website.
Know the key signs of a scam. If someone demands total secrecy, if a supposed federal officer asks for money or if someone tells you to lie, it’s fraud.
Note the requested payment method. Scammers will ask for payments in hard to trace currencies, such as cryptocurrency, gold, gift cards and prepaid credit cards.

Resource

If you are a fraud victim or have questions about scams and fraud, call the free AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360 for advice and support.

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Ken Budd has written for National Geographic Traveler, Travel+Leisure, The Washington Post Magazine and many more. He is the author of a memoir, The Voluntourist.