2 Investigators: Couple Pays $1,500 In Hopes Of Tapping $75,000 'Grant'
(CBS) -- Imagine someone offering you a huge government grant, just to help you pay your bills.
It sounds too good to be true, but tens of thousands of people have fallen for it and they end up in even greater financial distress.
CBS 2's Pam Zekman investigates The Grant Scam.
It started with a text. Someone who identified himself as "Agent O'Connell" said he could get Mary Ahrens a $75,000 government grant.
"In exchange, I had to pay a $1,500 processing fee," she says.
The Ahrens family badly needed the money to pay off $40,000 in medical bills.
"I'm thinking, 'OK, the government does offer stuff like that.' I thought it was a legitimate person doing this," Michael Ahrens says.
Plus, the Ahrens thought a relative referred "Agent Brian O'Connell" to them through Facebook, but that turned out to be untrue.
"I told him I need the money for medical bills and I really would be grateful if he could help," Mary Ahrens says.
The Ahrens family borrowed the $1,500 from relatives and sent it to Agent O'Connell at the "Federal Grant Agency" via Western Union.
But, $1,500 wasn't enough.
"He wanted an additional $2,000," Michael Ahrens recalls.
That money was supposed to be used to pay the IRS taxes on the grant.
"Then we went down to $1,500. Then he went down to $500," Michael Ahrens says.
The Ahrenses never received their grant and texted the agent that they wanted their money back, but he replied: "No way."
"It's disgusting that he prays on vulnerable people and I wonder how many other people he did this to," Mary Ahrens says.
"We're seeing tens of thousands of complaints about bogus calls offering people government grants," Steve Baker of the Federal Trade Commission says.
There is no such thing as the Federal Grant Agency.
"Our government may do some dumb things, but calling people with free money for no strings attached you don't have to repay is not something the government does," Baker says.
There are legitimate government grants like those found on Grants.gov, but the application process is very detailed and they are never used to pay off bills. As well, the government never offers grants by phone call or text.
The Ahrenses say the scammer continues to text them to this day in hopes of getting more money.
"If I would have known where the guy was I would have confronted him and said, 'Hey, we're on a limited income, why do you do this to people like us?" Michael Ahrens says.
Once again, there is no federal grant agency and no grants to pay our bills. Government officials say it's very hard to track these con men down because many of the operations are based overseas. If you have been a victim of such a scam you should contact the FTC.
