AARP’s ‘Fraud Wars’ Episode 1: Judith Boivin Had $600,000 Stolen in an FBI Impostor Scam

“In retrospect, of course, I see how he built up a relationship, a friendship with me, and I was receptive to him,” Boivin says.

He asked her to fill out a form disclosing the value and location of her assets. The plan was to have her withdraw the money and put it in a safe place to protect it from the cartel.

Jacobs told her to inform Morgan Stanley, which managed most of her money, that she needed to liquidate her accounts. Morgan Stanley, however, suspected a scam. It assigned two investigators to the case and froze her account for 10 days.

“I was very defensive about not being given my money,” says Boivin, who suspected that the financial institution was primarily concerned about losing her account. Looking back, she says she wishes the investigators had been more explicit about their concerns.

When Morgan Stanley finally relinquished her money, Jacobs said they would store it as evidence in a “safety locker” at a Washington, D.C., courthouse. She received a locker number with documentation supposedly from the U.S. State Department. The funds would be returned after a trial, and she would receive a new Social Security number. 

Boivin moved the money to four different banks, as directed. In November 2023, she worked with Jacobs to coordinate drops where she would hand over bundles of money: $20,000 in cash, carefully sealed and wrapped, as instructed by Jacobs. The first transfer was in a strip mall parking lot. Jacobs stayed on the phone with her, coaching her on where to go. She walked to a black, unmarked SUV. The passenger-side window came down, and she dropped in the money.

Boivin made four more drops, the last in mid-December 2023. In January, she received an email and voicemail from the Maryland attorney general’s office. This time, the message was real. The caller told her she was the victim of a scam.

A devastating blow

After hearing the news, “I went into a kind of shock,” she would later say. She informed her family and reported the crime to the Rockville police. She also filed a report with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center and spoke with an FBI agent. His boss was Wayne A. Jacobs — the real one.

The agent said the scam was run from a call center in India, and his team had been trying to shut it down since 2019. The same scam had victimized 12 other people.

As the weeks passed, she struggled to cope with the crime.

She says she’s accepted that the money is gone, but “it’s harder to make peace with the self-judgment, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, anger, injustice. It doesn’t just go away.”

One of her daughters found a link for the AARP Fraud Victim Support Group. They attended their first online session in February 2024. Boivin calls it “a sacred space” for victims to share their stories. She’s become a “wise voice and fierce supporter of her fellow attendees,” says Liz Buser, AARP’s senior adviser for fraud prevention.

“I now see this as another life experience,” she says. “[The theft has] removed the security that we had for our aging process. But at the same time, our children have stepped forward, and it’s taught me to be a better receiver of the generosity of others, which takes a lot of humility.”

The scammers stole her savings, but they did not steal her spirit. “My belief system,” she says, “is not based on fear.”

Knowledge is power: How to protect yourself from impostor scams

These scams are disturbingly prevalent. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 845,000 reports of impostor scams, totaling $2.95 billion in losses, according to its Consumer Sentinel Network report, released in March 2025. The numbers are likely far higher, however; fraud is a notoriously underreported crime.

Lessons from Boivin’s experience include:

• Analyze email addresses. The FBI emails looked real, but came from a .com address rather than a .gov address.
• Be wary if someone won’t meet in person. “Jacobs” claimed he couldn’t meet with her because they were involved in a covert operation, but impostors decline face-to-face encounters for an obvious reason: It will likely expose them as frauds.
• Watch for secrecy. The phony agent insisted on confidentiality, which is another hallmark of scams. Criminals don’t want you talking with anyone who might expose their scheme.
• Don’t overshare online. Scammers exploited online information about Boivin’s life and career to lure her into the scam. Keep your details and posts private on social media.

Resources and support for scam victims

• Report the crime to local law enforcement and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
• Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline toll-free at 877-908-3360 for resources about scams and next steps.
• Register to join the AARP Fraud Victim Support Group. Trained facilitators lead the confidential, free online sessions.
• Learn more about government impostor scams in this story about a Connecticut woman who had $165,000 stolen by scammers and this episode of AARP’s award-winning The Perfect Scam podcast, which describes how a woman in Montana lost her life savings to a criminal who claimed to be an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.