I am submitting this letter to you with the hope that people in Malibu don’t experience the same event that I did.
On Dec. 28, at 10:30 a.m., I received a call from a person claiming to be my granddaughter. She said she had been arrested in Las Vegas and was charged with a DUI and desperately needed my help. She pleaded with me to not let her parents know, which I agreed to. She then turned me over to her attorney who introduced herself as Mary Sanders. Ms. Sanders told me that my granddaughter and two friends had been arrested at 1:30 a.m. in Las Vegas after having an accident with another vehicle. All three were being held and charged with DUI and were given a bail amount of $2,825. She repeated my granddaughter’s plea not to inform the parents. I agreed. She told me to wire the bail via Western Union (WU) to a person named Gerry Jefferson (the Las Vegas bailiff) but not to reveal any of the details to WU. I asked her for an address and she gave the following address but then said the address was not necessary: 175 Church St. She gave me a phone number to call her 800.448.5960. I went to Wells Fargo and withdrew $3,000 and went to the local WU outlet at Pavilions in Malibu. With the WU fee of $191, the total wired was $3016. . The WU transaction number was 648-843-1821 and was sent at 11:24 a.m. Subsequently I received a call from a person claiming to be from WU stating I had misspelled the first name of the bailiff and should go back to WU and resubmit the wire to Jerry Jefferson, which I did at 12.28 p.m. I got another call from Ms. Sanders around 1:15 p.m. stating the bailiff had the money and she would go before the judge and claim that there was no proof that my granddaughter was the driver. About another hour later she called back and said that the judge could not release my granddaughter until he had received a medical report from the victim of the crash. My granddaughter was told she would have to spend the night in jail.
We told Ms. Sanders that we were going to call our son and let him in on the ordeal. That was the last we heard from her. I then called my son and he revealed that our granddaughter had been with him all along. So I called the number the attorney had left but it turned out to be a fax number. I called the Lost Hills L.A. County Sheriffs office who said they would send over a deputy shortly who had been meeting with a family in Paradise Cove who had experienced the identical scam. I then called WU home office and reported the incident. They said that there was surveillance equipment at the WU where the pickup had occurred but could only reveal this information to law enforcement people. He suggested I call the southern Nevada FBI and the Las Vegas PD which I did. But the LVPD said their fraud department had gone home for the day and therefore would not be able to process my complaint. I spoke with someone at the Southern Nevada FBI office regarding the incident and was told to wait for a follow-up from them which never happened. The LA sheriff deputy came by and I filled him in repeating the statement from WU about the surveillance cameras and he said I would get a call from a detective no later than next Monday, which I never did. So I called them twice and got a recorded message and didn’t hear back and three weeks later I visited their office and they told me the case was not in their jurisdiction and they had turned the case over to the Nevada FBI. However the day afterward I received a call from the sheriff’s office in response to my two earlier calls stating again that the case was out of their jurisdiction and said a file had not been turned over to the FBI and that I had to start from scratch with the FBI. I then went to the Nevada FBI website and submitted a note identical to this but never heard back. I also wrote the same note to the California Attorney General and got a letter stating that they don’t deal with personal fraud cases.
To date, this is where the issue stands and I hope and pray that this letter helps others in Malibu to avoid the same experience and will know that the law enforcement agencies choose not to offer any support in these matters.
Steve Blinn