BALTIMORE — A Maryland widow was convinced by a scammer to send $11,000 in cash through the mail.
Before the package was delivered, she realized what was happening and tried to stop it.
Now, the package is missing.
The woman is sharing what happened in hopes it keeps someone else from doing the same thing. WMAR-2 News is not identifying her because she is concerned about being targeted again.
She wasn’t trying to get rich, and she wasn’t looking for love. She thought she was protecting her identity and her money.
“On August 25th, I received a text message from Apple stating my account was being charged $359 for child pornography,” she recalled. “It scared me.”
She called the number in the message to dispute the charge.
The person on the phone told her a hacker had compromised her identity and opened eight additional accounts in her name with more than $200,000 in available credit.
“I said, ‘It's not me. Please do not charge my account,’” she recalled. “Well, ma'am, we're going to transfer you to the FTC.”
Then she heard a different man on the phone. He identified himself as Andrew Ferguson, the real chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.
“Please Google me and see that I am a real person before we go any farther,” she remembered him telling her.
She did. Andrew Ferguson is a real person. But the man on the phone was not Ferguson.
The FTC has specifically warned about scammers impersonating its chairman. In a February 2025 consumer alert, the agency warned that scammers were using Ferguson’s name and described schemes that can begin with an unexpected message about a suspicious purchase or account breach. The scammer may then connect the victim with someone claiming to be a government official who offers to help protect their money.
The woman did not know about that warning at the time.
She stayed on the phone, terrified and believing she needed to send the FTC money to keep hackers from taking it.
“How much did they ask you to send?” asked WMAR-2 News Mallory Sofastaii.
“$11,000, in cash, which I did,” she responded.
The instructions were specific. She was told to put the cash in a metal lockbox, place that inside another box, secure it with duct tape and ship it.
She followed the instructions and sent the package through UPS.
Then something didn’t feel right.
She went home, looked up Ferguson again and listened to his actual voice. It did not match the man she had been speaking with.
She knew she had been scammed.
“I immediately went to UPS, put a hold on that package. The package should have never left UPS,” she said.
Tracking information reviewed by WMAR-2 News shows she dropped off the package on the evening of August 25. UPS scanned it into its Baltimore facility at 6:57 p.m. On August 26, UPS processed the package at 4:26 a.m. and scanned it as “Loaded on Delivery Vehicle” at 4:48 a.m.
Then came her attempt to get it back.
At 8:01 a.m., the tracking history shows “Return to Sender Requested.” More than an hour later, at 9:40 a.m., UPS marked the package “Out For Delivery Today.” At 9:52 a.m., another entry appeared: “The sender requested that we hold this package.”
The package was never returned to her.
On September 11, the tracking history was updated again: “Package could not be located for intercept.”
UPS previously confirmed to WMAR-2 News that it has been unable to locate the package.
WMAR-2 News asked UPS where the package was last physically scanned, what happened after the return and hold requests were made and what procedures the company follows when someone reports that a package still in transit contains money or valuables sent as part of a scam.
UPS did not address those questions individually.
“We take customer concerns seriously and thoroughly reviewed this matter,” UPS provided in a statement. “While we cannot discuss specifics, we worked with the customer to investigate the circumstances. We encourage consumers to remain vigilant against fraud schemes.”
Her experience did not end there.
After losing access to the $11,000, she went online looking for a lawyer who could help scam victims recover their money. She found a website and began communicating through an online chat, believing she was speaking with someone connected to a legitimate attorney.
“I thought I was chatting with a lawyer who could help me with this,” she recalled. “Come to find out, that's a scam also.”
This time, something raised a red flag. The person told her they did not conduct phone calls with clients.
She independently found the real law office’s phone number and called. The office informed her that the person she had been communicating with was an impersonator. She had not sent the second scammer money.
The FTC calls these recovery scams. They target people who have already lost money, often with promises to recover what was stolen.
The agency warns that scammers may pose as government agencies, consumer organizations or law firms and ask victims to pay money or provide financial information in exchange for supposedly recovering their losses.
After two attempts to deceive her, she now second-guesses everyone.
“I did question you, Mallory. I am so sorry, but like I said, who do you trust?” she said.
She isn’t hopeful she’ll see her money again, so what she wants is to warn others.
“Please be very, very careful,” she urged. “They come after people in our age group. I am a senior and they know who's vulnerable. They know the ones that they can get and unfortunately I happened to be one of them.”
The FTC declined to comment specifically on her case but directed WMAR-2 News to several consumer alerts and videos about scammers impersonating FTC officials, including Ferguson.
The agency has also warned that a real FTC employee will not text a photo of an agency ID to prove who they are. In June, the FTC cautioned that scammers may send convincing-looking images of government credentials as part of an impersonation scheme.
The most important warning is straightforward: The FTC will never tell someone to move or send money to protect it.
Government impersonators often create a sense of urgency and may threaten arrest, claim an account has been compromised or insist that money must be moved immediately. The FTC recommends hanging up and independently contacting the agency or company using contact information you know is legitimate.
And if you have already lost money, someone promising to recover it may be another scammer. Never pay someone upfront based on a promise that they can recover money lost to fraud.
Looking back, the woman wishes she had interrupted that first phone call long enough to check with someone she trusted.
“I should have hung up and made a phone call,” she recalled. “Please, if anybody gets any messages like this, make a phone call before you send anything because you aren't getting it back.”
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.