LEWISTON, Minn. – A woman reported being scammed out of $12,200 in an elaborate scheme that began with a telephone call that her grandson needed money to get out a legal jam in Indiana. “How much?” The caller, a man who identified himself as the grandson’s attorney, was precise: $12,200. He said he would send a courier to pick up the money – and not to tell anybody at her bank because a judge had ordered a gag order. The woman, age 86, who lives south of Interstate 90 on County 109, drove to town and withdrew the money in cash. At home she waited for the courier. He arrived a half hour later and took the cash. It seemed odd, she said, that he appeared to have arrived on foot on the unpaved rural road where she lives. She said she watched as he departed, walking half a mile down the road to a waiting car with a driver. As best as she could tell, it was a dark vehicle perhaps with rally stripes. The woman described the courier as a black male in his 30s and wearing a surgical mask. After he was gone the woman grew concerned that she had been scammed. She called the Winona police dispatch center. That was about 3:50 p.m. The initial call from the supposed Indiana attorney had been about four hours earlier. Sheriff’s deputies began a canvass of neighbors who might have surveillance video. There was reason to believe, at least a possibility, that the scheme was hatched locally, an investigator said.
