A supermarket employee noticed the strange purchase of an elderly lady, which made him suspicious. He shares his concern on Reddit, which unfortunately shares his bad premonition.
The cover image is a symbolic image.
What does the employee report? A supermarket employee (elenkayan on Reddit) reports in the Steam subreddit about a strange situation that happened during his shift. An elderly lady came by twice in one day and purchased Steam gift cards worth $500 each.
As it turned out, she had been doing this for days, spending nearly $1,600 on these gift cards during this time.
“Why would someone need so much money for Steam?” elenkayan wonders, “Yes, we asked her why she needs so much money for Steam. She told us that there are people who give her money to buy it for them and deliver it.”
But the employee fears worse. “We are worried that someone is forcing her or that she is being scammed.”
Community shares the bad premonition
How did the employee deal with the suspicion? Elenkayan explains that he and his colleagues suspected a scam, which typically targets older people. The scammers specifically target seniors to charge them large sums of money that they are then supposed to pay for purchased gift cards.
Unfortunately, the employees were bound by the rules of the store chain: “We can’t call the police until we are sure that someone has broken the law, otherwise we would be punished,” he explains in his post, “by the way, the store chain I work for doesn’t even offer training for such situations. We were just told to sell it, and that was it.”
Elenkayan adds that he lives in Poland, but he keeps to himself which supermarket chain it is.
What does the community suggest? The top comment with the most (currently almost 7,000 upvotes) under elenkayan’s experience agrees with his suspicion: “The lady is being scammed, it’s probably a tech support scam or something like that.”
Nova-Redux agrees: “It’s either tech support or ‘Your loved ones are in trouble.’”
Frogmouth_Fresh adds: “Most likely a scam (99% sure) … although it’s also possible that the elderly lady is addicted to a gacha game.”
Most reactions, however, not only share the employee’s suspicion but also urge him to help the elderly lady.
- TheSpecialApple: “As everyone else has said, this is a clear sign that it is a scam. You really should stop her.”
- Crossedkiller: “Seriously. OP, it’s now up to you to help this lady. Please don’t stand by. Elderly people can lose their entire savings due to such scams, and I’m not talking about a few hundred dollars. These people can lose hundreds of thousands. The next time she is in the store, you must tell her that you cannot sell her the gift cards, call the police, and file a report. Hopefully, it’s not too late.”
Unfortunately, it is a scheme that seems to work; otherwise, such scammers, as is suspected in this case, would not continue. Please inform the elderly people in your surroundings about such scams, as they often follow similar patterns, as the community on Reddit has already mentioned. A little more luck than the elderly lady from Poland had an American senior citizen from Texas – or at least she thought so: Elderly woman wins 71.5 million euros in the lottery, loses the entire win just a week later
