Transcript for Former head of FBI and CIA threatened by scammers
We’re going to turn now to a special kind of malevolence talking about criminals who target the elderly trying to bilk them out of their life savings. Not even those who were heavily involved in law enforcement are immune to their threats. ABC’s Pierre Thomas has more on a massive crackdown. Reporter: Former federal judge William Webster had a storied career in law enforcement. The only man to serve as both CIA and FBI director. But despite his decorated career, that did not stop fraudsters who target the elderly from terrorizing he and his wife Lynda. It is so easy to kill you, you just take your sniper. Reporter: What you’re hearing are calls from the Webster home from a Jamaican national convicted of extortion in this case. He basically said that he was going to kill me. He proceeded to describe what my blood would look like on my white house when my head was shot off. Reporter: Here’s more from that chilling call. You just take a shot aim and hit the back of the brain. Reporter: It was one of many calls placed to the home of the websters. Live to the websters it all began with a call telling them they won a $72 million lottery. But there was a catch. They needed to pay $50,000 in taxes up front. The recordings were released as part of the justice department’s largest ever crackdown on fraud against the elderly. More than 200 suspected fraudsters charged. The government says they had 2 million victims who face potential losses of more than $700 million. This is a particularly despicable crime because — and it’s a massive and growing problem and it’s despicable because the people involved are vulnerablend because of their stage in life, they don’t have the opportunity frequently to recover and so these losses are devastating to them. Reporter: The websters say they are living witnesses that no one is immune. Anyone, absolutely anybody can be targeted by the scammers. I feel so sorry for older people who get this good news of the money they’ve won and they are going to be terribly disappointed. Reporter: The FBI says anyone who is affected by these types of scammers can call 1-800-call-fbi and report it. Eva. All right. Thanks, Pierre. A good reminder for people and reminder that everyone is susceptible to this. Yeah, for people with aging parents it’s a thing to talk about them. This is a really bad thing to be
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