As technology advances at an unprecedented pace, it leaves the older generations much more vulnerable to new kinds of crime.

In Cincinnati, Cecil Rodgers walked into the Evendale Walmart. He asked the clerk, Audrella Taylor, to assist him in making a money transfer worth $2,300. But after a short conversation with Taylor, the transaction was rejected entirely.

Taylor sensed something was off with Rodger’s story.

So instead of helping him send the money, she helped him avoid a scam that would’ve cost him his Christmas.

Rodgers narrated the story to WCPO Cincinnati. He said he received a call from one of his grandchildren. The voice said: “Papaw, this is your oldest grandson. I’m in trouble.”

According to the person pretending to be his grandson, he had hit a woman’s car and she was seven months pregnant.

He was allegedly charged with ‘driving under the influence’ and was jailed. To convince Rodgers of the alarming story, the ‘grandson’ even put a ‘lawyer’ on the phone.

The ‘lawyer’ said he needed to go to a local Walmart and do a direct store-to-store money transfer. They instructed him to send $2,300, just enough to cover the ‘bail bond’.

Rodgers, of course, wanted to bail him out.

He couldn’t just leave his grandson behind bars, especially when he had the capacity to help. Loving grandparents don’t know any better, that’s why they are easy prey for alarming calls like these.

But of all the registers that Rodgers could have approached, he chose Taylor’s row. The five-year Walmart employee immediately suspected the story to be a scam. She knew that Rodgers was being set up, so she took matters into her own hands.

“I said, ‘I am going to refuse the sender. I’m not going to let you send that money. I think you are being scammed,'” Taylor shared with the news outlet what she told Rodgers.

Instead, she told Rodgers to call his children and ask them if any of his grandchildren were in trouble.

No one was in trouble, and his real oldest grandson was safe at college.

The scammers explicitly told Rodgers not to tell anyone about the call. Victims were also prohibited to tell other family members or clerks in the store. This makes the scam so successful because it isolates the victim from people with reliable information.

“Because his daughter hadn’t been contacted yet, I felt like if a son was in true need, the mom would have been contacted first before the grandpa would,” Taylor explained.

Walmart store manager Dominic Gross commended Taylor for her quick thinking.

But above all else, Taylor exemplified her commitment to her customers. It was not really part of her job to investigate, but she did it anyway. She showed that even if the world is unkind, we can thwart it together by looking out for each other.

Walmart now trains cashiers and staff members about scams like these so they can help more people in the future.

Rodgers thanked Taylor not only for saving him $2,000 but also for saving his family’s Christmas.

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Source: YouTube – WCPO 9, WCPO 9, Yahoo Finance