Stay on the alert, senior citizens. There’s a new scam in town.

Police and Better Business Bureau officials have given it a variety of labels, but by any name, it is a scam that targets senior citizens by preying on their heartstrings.

In what is known as the Grandma Scam, the Distressed Loved One Scam and the Canada Scam, young callers, often sobbing uncontrollably, normally start the phone call by saying, “Hi, Grandma, it’s me.”

At least one set of grandparents in Woodway, a set in Waco and one grandmother in Woodway all received phone calls recently from people posing as their grandsons and a granddaughter. The callers all said they were traveling in Canada, had a wreck in a rental car after having a couple of drinks and now needed their grandparents to wire them thousands of dollars to get out of jail.

One other thing the callers all said: “Please don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“It was very distressing,” Margie Allen said. “The caller was supposedly my precious grandson, who lives in Waco. My poor husband was here, and it was just a miracle that he didn’t go down and send the money off.”

Allen, who said the caller asked for $3,700, was lucky. She just happened to know that her 27-year-old grandson was not in Canada, and she already had been warned about the scam by her friend, James F. Cole, who days before had gotten a similar call from someone claiming to be his grandson.

Cole, 89, retired executive vice president of the Baylor University Alumni Association, went as far as to draw $3,800 out of his bank account and was about to wire it to Ottawa, Canada, when Slade Jordan, a loss-prevention specialist at the Wal-Mart in Hewitt, who was alerted to the situation by a cashier, asked Cole to take a moment and call his grandson before wiring the cash.

“He said, ‘I don’t think I would do that.’ Had it not been for him, that money would have been on its way and gone forever, I guess,” Cole said.

Cole’s 24-year-old grandson, Jason Bucy, lives in Los Angeles.

“I called him and said, ‘What are you doing? You are supposed to be in Canada,’ ” Cole said.

Better Business Bureau officials say they have gotten reports about grandparents from California to New Hampshire who thought they were sending money to help their grandchildren. While many seniors, like the ones from the Waco area, reported the scam without falling victim to it, many others have been victimized, according to the BBB. One well-meaning grandmother sent $15,000 to con artists in Canada, thinking she was helping a grandchild who had been in an auto accident.

“This scam is just despicable because it preys on the emotions of seniors who want nothing more than to ensure the safety of their grandchildren,” said Carrie Hurt, president of the BBB serving the Waco area. “They key to avoiding this scam is to remain calm despite the emergency nature of the call and to verify the identify of the caller. Too often, people are allowing themselves to get caught up in the false sense of urgency, and they end up making emotional, instead of logical, decisions.”

Waco police spokesman Steve Anderson said it is important to make phone calls, like the Wal-Mart clerk asked Cole to do, and try to verify as much information as possible before sending money.

“These people are trying to pull the strings of your emotions,” Anderson said. “The main thing is to make a phone call, verify this information, before you up and send money.”

Martha Bancroft, 87, of Woodway, said she got a call about 4:45 p.m. from a crying woman who said it was her granddaughter. She had gone to Montreal with a friend to a wedding, had a couple of glasses of wine at the reception and got pulled over in her rental car on the way home. She was in jail and needed $2,400 within the hour to get out, the caller said.

She even had the names of a lawyer appointed for her in Montreal and the police clerk if she wanted to talk to them to verify it all, the caller said.

“I kind of just stalled,” Bancroft said. “I told her that my bank was closed, and it would have to wait. I was suspicious, yet I was so upset. I wasn’t sure, but I thought something wasn’t right. I am very close to my grandchildren, yet I thought she would have called her parents about something like this.”

Bancroft hung up and called her daughter, who lives in Ohio, to ask about her 26-year-old granddaughter, Marta, who also lives in Ohio. Her granddaugther, as it turns out, was not in Canada but Cleveland.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

757-5737