Postal carrier stops $36,000 crypto scam targeting elderly woman

BEAVERCREEK — Billions stolen in Crypto scams; Local postal carrier hailed hero for stopping scam

Billions of dollars are lost to crypto scams, and one Miami Valley Police Department is crediting a postal carrier for stopping one scam in its tracks.

Officers said she called police after seeing an elderly woman depositing hundreds of dollars into a Crypto ATM.

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News Center 7’s Xavier Hershovitz was in Greene County Thursday, where officers are seeing a growing trend in Crypto scams.

Lisa Cordes, of Germantown, said, “We’re out there six days a week.” She has been a postal carrier for more than 20 years. But her usual stop at the Shell station on Dayton-Xenia Road was unlike anything she’d seen before.

“I noticed an older woman at a Bitcoin machine with a phone, cell phone at her ear, and she looked kind of puzzled,” Cordes said.

The woman was feeding $100 bills into a Crypto ATM. Cordes feared the woman was in the middle of being scammed.

“I thought, well, I’ll try to speak to her. She didn’t want to listen to me. She was insistent that her IT people were helping her keep her money safe,” Cordes said.

She called Beavercreek Police, and officers were able to track down the woman. Officers said the woman was being scammed, talking with someone on the phone claiming to be a legal authority.