Dec 21, 2018 4 min read

The smartest thing a local man did was to go to jail.

Not as a prisoner, mind you.

He had a package containing $14,000 out of which a phone scam artist hoped to bilk him, claiming his grandson needed immediate cash to spring him from Washington County jail.

What the would-be thief hadn’t anticipated was that the intended mark would actually go to the jail, where the plot was thwarted, thanks to the actions of a guard and a major.

“We don’t know why he stumbled in,” said Warden Edward Strawn, who did not identify the victim but said he was a local man.

The con began with a phone call last week to a couple who were told their grandson was incarcerated at the county jail.

The con artist, posing as a bail bondsman, told his intended mark there was a gag order in place, so the transaction was to remain hush-hush and kept from family members.

Cash was to be mailed to the Philadelphia area. The grandfather withdrew from a bank the five-figure amount, which Strawn said equaled the couple’s life savings. At the bank, when questioned, the man said he needed the money to buy replacement windows.

Luckily, before heading for a post office, the granddad went, carrying cash in a cardboard box, to the county jail for assurance that once he mailed the package, the “prisoner” would be released.

In the jail lobby, the gentleman encountered Corrections Officer Thomas Bastian, who listened to the tale, examined the address of the alleged bail bondsman and immediately suspected a scam was afoot.

There was no such bail bondsman in this area, and Bastian told the grandfather the usual procedure when posting bail would be to meet the bondsman in person.

“You never put money in the mail,” Bastian said Thursday. “I told him to hold on a second, got the major (David Coddington), and we explained to him that’s not the way it works.”

The would-be thief called while the grandfather was at the jail, and Bastian informed him the jig was up.

In return, Bastian and Coddington each got an earful of obscenities and threats on their lives.

The jail visitor’s wife was seated in the couple’s vehicle on West Cherry Avenue across from the courthouse, and Coddington accompanied the man back to the car, lest any danger befall him while carrying such a large amount of cash.

“I actually got on the phone with the attorney general’s (office) while they were there,” Coddington said.

“Being that they didn’t mail the money, they weren’t a victim, so we set it up to have a scam complaint form mailed to them.”

He also encouraged the couple, described as being in their 60s or 70s, to return right away to the bank to deposit the $14,000.

“I think they grew up at a time when they could trust people,” Coddington said of the grandparents.

The scenario was described Thursday morning at the county commissioners meeting.

Commission Chairman Larry Maggi, a former state trooper, said when commending the jail personnel that the board aimed, in shedding light on the scam, to keep others from falling for a similar trap.

Maggi said he also knew of cons who would claim to be a relative and whisper into a phone so as to disguise their voices.

“We don’t even have statistics on this,” he said after the meeting. “People pay, and they’re so embarrassed they won’t report it.”

Strawn said if there’s one takeaway, it would be never to heed those who claim to be businesses or government entities who call out of the blue and demand cash or equivalent payments.