A Ghanaian man named Isaac Oduro Boateng, known as Abu Trica, was extradited to the United States this week to face charges he ran a grandparent scam that took millions from elderly Americans. This is what that call sounds like from the other end of the line.
Ciprian Teodor was sentenced this week for his role in a grandparent scam that ran through Regina, White Butte, and Saskatoon in late 2025. The jail term is the ending. The kitchen was the crime scene.
Xin Liu was the hand at the door. The voice on the phone was someone else, somewhere else, and the cash she collected over eight days in July had a name on it that belonged to a woman who thought she was saving her grandson.
A Cleveland man pleaded guilty in a transnational scheme that turned ride-share drivers into unwitting cash couriers and grandchildren's voices into the lock that opened a generation's savings accounts. The machine ran from October through January. The drivers never knew what they were carrying.
A Romanian woman was arrested in Békés County on suspicion of collecting cash and gold from elderly Hungarians who believed their sons were in jail. She was the last link in a chain that started with a phone call and ended at a stranger's front door.
Stefano Zanetti ran the money end of a grandparent scam from an oceanfront house in Panama while retirees in Pittsburgh handed cash to strangers at their front doors. In May 2026, a U.S. federal judge gave him 188 months.