AARP Eye Center
At the direction of a fraudster, a woman in her 80s drove to four Lowe’s home improvement stores near her home in St. Louis where she snapped up 26 Target gift cards worth $500 a piece — and nothing else. In all, the twice-widowed woman spent $13,000, equal to almost seven months of her Social Security benefits. “It’s just the most horrible thing,” the first-time fraud victim says now.
Time-stamped receipts show the purchases occurred between 1:15 and 5 p.m. on Sept. 2. She drove 50 miles in all, so consumed by stress that she skipped lunch.

AARP Membership — $12 for your first year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal
Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP The Magazine.
Alarm bells literally go off
Her ordeal began earlier that day when she logged onto her computer to research an anti-fungal cream. An alarm blared. “This screaming sound, screaming so loud it hurt your ears,” she remembers. “I couldn’t stand it. I thought, ‘What in God’s name is it?’ ”
The woman, interviewed by AARP, is not being named in this story.
The alarm sounded as a pop-up computer message kept flashing, urging her to contact Microsoft at 1-800-642-7676. That is, in fact, its customer service number, but cybercrooks spoof it and pretend it’s theirs, the tech giant says. The error and warning messages sent by Microsoft never include a phone number, so if you receive such an alert with a phone number, do not call it, Microsoft says. Here’s more of its guidance.
The woman phoned Microsoft — or so she thought — and a man who called himself Chris Wright gave her his purported badge number. The alarm persisted. “Oh my God, I can’t stand this noise,” she told him. She was so unnerved that she was shaking, and teeth were chattering.
'Like I was in a dream'
Wright, a name she now believes is fake, told her to turn down the volume on the computer — but not to turn off the device. Even after lowering the volume, the alarm still screeched.