Eighteen-year-old Addy Mooney of Marblehead knew something wasn’t right with the older woman at Richdale on Smith Street. She was asking the cashier for help with the Bitcoin machine.
“She was in her 70s or 80s, and she was holding her phone like she was talking to someone while this interaction was happening,” Mooney said. “It seemed kind of scammy.”
Mooney walked home, but, she said, “I felt deep down there was something up. I felt like this woman was in trouble.”
So, she called Marblehead Police to report that an older woman at Richdale might be getting scammed. Mooney ran back to Richdale and found the woman sitting in her car.
She explained to the woman that she might be a victim of a Bitcoin scam and asked to look at her phone.
“I saw all these texts. ‘I love you; I’m going to take care of you,’” Mooney said. “It was very obviously a scam. The guy sent her this whole step-by-step on how to get Bitcoin.”
The woman admitted that the man, whom she had never met but had been texting with for five months, was asking for $19,000. Luckily, she couldn’t get the Bitcoin machine working.
The police arrived, spoke with the woman and then contacted her adult daughter.
“She was emotional,” Mooney said about the older woman. “I was giving her hugs and saying, ‘It’s going to be OK.’”
The police were so impressed with Mooney they presented her with a junior officer police badge sticker, which she placed proudly on her journal.
“This can be my story,” she said.
How did Mooney know so much about scammers? She and her family listen to the “Endless Thread” podcast.
“They did a whole in-depth thing about scammers and scam busters,” she said.
Police Chief Dennis King did not want to comment on the case because it remains under investigation. He did have this to say about Mooney: “Her stepping in and helping someone that may be a victim of a scam is appropriate and good civic looking out for another. Helping to interrupt an online scam where the suspect poses no threat to the bystander is the right thing to do. At the very least, telling the person they may be a victim of a scam may interrupt the process to confirm it’s in fact a scam.”
Mooney graduated from Marblehead High on Friday and is heading to Colgate University this fall, “where I’ll keep preaching about internet safety,” she said with a laugh.
