The Plant City store gave $4,000 to Ralph Hough on Thursday afternoon.
Like many people these days, Ralph Hough recently found himself in the targets of a telephone scammer. The Plant City man was out $4,000 because of a scammer pretending to be a government official and nearly lost an additional $4,000.
Thanks to Plant City’s Winn-Dixie store, Hough saved the money and no longer has to worry about the “IRS” threatening him and his family.
Not only did the Plant City store come to Hough’s aid by informing him of the scam and calling the police, but on Thursday afternoon it presented him with a $4,000 check to make up for the money he lost when he was initially called on March 27.
“It doesn’t happen to everybody,” Mendy Feaster, Hough’s daughter, said. “It’s just a God thing, that they chose to do that for him.”
After receiving a letter in the mail from someone claiming to be U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which said he had made illegal purchases from China, the phone scammer told Hough in March the IRS knew of his activity and he would be arrested if he didn’t comply with their request for Google Play card numbers. So he went to his bank, withdrew the money, purchased the cards and gave the numbers away.
“That was a different ball game,” Hough said. “It made me nervous.”
On March 28, he was told to drive to a bank in Tampa the next day to repeat the process, which he did. But when he got to the Plant City Winn-Dixie to buy the cards, claiming they were for his young grandchild as instructed, store employees sensed something was wrong.
“I had him come into the office to tell me the story and I knew right away that it was a scam,” Assistant Manager Peggy Wade said.
Wade contacted his wife to let her know he was safe and called the Plant City Police Department, whose officers made contact with the scammer.
“When the police came out, they actually called the number that he was told to call and they gave fake gift card numbers to them,” Wade said. “They finally said, ‘Hey, we’re the Plant City Police,’ and they said click and hung up on him.”
Though Hough’s day and money were saved thanks to the store’s efforts, Winn-Dixie management decided to take their efforts one step further and reimburse Hough for the initial $4,000 he lost to the scammer. The move, they said, seemed like the right thing to do to help a member of the Plant City community in need.
“We care about our community,” Wade said. “We care about the people here. He shouldn’t have been taken advantage of, so it’s important that we take care of our customers.”
Hough is far from the only senior citizen in the area to be targeted by scammers, so he hopes his experience will help people lose their fears and know what to do when the “bad guys” come calling for gift card numbers.
“Play hard to hear. You don’t need to hear everything they claim you need to hear,” Hough said. “But you can get out of it. You can back out of it.”
