PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — Treasure Island police are warning about a scam ring that started with a phone call and eventually escalated into suspects walking into a woman's home.
"You can’t trust nobody apparently, so it's kind of shocking," said Ines Cali, who lives near Treasure Island.
Watch report from Casey Albritton
"This was really a complicated case and turned into a spiderweb of investigation," said Treasure Island Police Chief John Barkley.
It’s a scam investigation no one expected.
"We’ve been here for so long, 38 years, and never heard of anything like this happening, and it's kind of scary because you don't know who to trust anymore now," said Cali.
Treasure Island Police said the scammers impersonated an elderly woman’s bank… those scams failed. Then the suspects persuaded the woman that she needed to protect her jewelry and other valuables.
"They had her open her safe, told her open the garage door and go inside so you don’t have to see me, drove his car into the garage, shut the garage door, emptied the safe, pulled out of the garage and drove away," said Barkley.
Police used neighborhood surveillance and Flock cameras to identify the car the scammers used and arrested two people in connection with the case.
"What began as a telephone call outside of our jurisdiction, eventually resulted in the suspect physically coming to a treasure island residents home, this demonstrates how sophisticated, how aggressive these scams can become," said Barkley.
The investigation took police to multiple states, and they were eventually able to recover some of the jewelry and 83% of the wire fraud loss.
Treasure Island Police said you can call the police station to verify if something is a scam.
"What I would suggest is before you trust anything like it, get resources out of it, Google it, call, make phone calls, make sure it’s legit before you invite people over," said Cali.
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