FOND DU LAC, Wis. (NBC 26) — When someone walked into his store trying to send a birthday present with next-day shipping, Brad Pollesch didn't feel right.
"Anything we send next-day air is kind of like always 'well, let's look at what's going on,'" he said. "Why is it going next-day air?"
So he asked some questions.
"What was she sending?" Pollesch asked. "Who was she sending it to? Did she know this person? What was the sort of relationship with them?"
When the customer didn't provide clear answers, the UPS Store owner knew something was wrong.
"You're sending a birthday present to someone, you know them and you sometimes talk about 'what are you sending?... that's so nice,'" Pollesch said. "All of that was just missing."
Last week, employees at the UPS in Fond du Lac caught a scam when someone tried to ship over $22,000 in a package.
"I was in shock when I first heard that figure," Pollesch said. "I just was like 'wow.'"
Pollesch alerted UPS of a suspicious package, and eventually the Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Department started investigating.
"We deal with these quite a bit, but receiving information from UPS on a potential scam is something that we normally don't get," Lieutenant of Detectives Chris Randall said.
The department reports the scammer convinced an elderly woman to send the cash to California by using internet and phone communications.
"These type of circumstances, they get to us," Randall said. "It makes us sad and it makes us angry and we need to find the people that are responsible for this."
Detectives are now making calls, attempting to locate those responsible.
"Suspects that engage in this type of behavior sometimes aren't even in the United States," Randall said. "So here in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, it gets tough to go after somebody who is across the pond."
So far, the case is unsolved in Fond du Lac. But the silver lining? The victim got her money back.
"Fortunately, we were able to prevent over 22,000 bucks in getting shipped over to California," Randall said.
"Some people, that's an entire year's worth of money," Pollesch said.
The FTC received 2.2 million fraud reports from consumers in 2020.
UPS does not accept cash shipments.
