Grandson Needing Money After Car Crash in Lebanon Not Really Grandson, Probably Not in Crash

A New Lenox grandmother was ripped off by a scammer posing as her grandson and claiming he needed cash after getting into a crash overseas.

A police officer met with the woman at her Brockwood Road home Friday afternoon and learned of the swindle.

The woman told the officer an “unknown person pretended to be her grandson and in desperate need of money,” police said. “The complainant wired money and later discovered it was not her grandson who made the request.”

According to the police, the “caller stated he was in a car crash and needed money wired to a public defender.”

The woman wired the money to Lebanon, police said.

New Lenox police detectives are investigating the case.

The New Lenox woman was the second local person scammed by a phony grandchild in recent months.

In September, a woman from the Bronx duped a local man out of $8,000 by pretending to be his granddaughter and claiming she was locked up on a pot charge, police said.

Valencia Johnson, 30, “said that she had been arrested for possession of cannabis and needed $8,000 to be released from jail, and induced (the man) to deposit $8,000 into a Bank of America account … in the name of Valencia Johnson,” according to a criminal complaint on file in Will County court.

Johnson is wanted on felony theft charges. The warrant for her arrest carries a $100,000 bond.