You’d think that if you walked into the store with thousands of dollars to spend, a store associate would want to help you as much as they could. But when Cecil Rogers stepped into Walmart eager to spend all his cash, he ended up getting saved by the person behind the checkout counter. The store associate didn’t want the senior citizen to lose all his hard-earned money.
So she decided to stop the senior citizen from wiring the money and refused to take the cash from him.
The incident occurred around Christmas time last year when Rogers’s only hope was to spend it with his grandchildren. They were coming over to his Elmwood Place home. But before they arrived, Rogers received a call from someone claiming to be his grandson. That’s when things started to go bad for him.
“Papaw,” the voice said on the phone. “This is your oldest grandson. I’m in trouble.”
Rogers spoke to WCPO News about the crime committed at his Walmart. The “grandson” told Rogers about how he had gotten into a car accident. He allegedly hit a pregnant woman’s car. The grandson told Rogers that he was charged with drunk driving and was being held in jail.
After the “grandson” told Rogers his sob story, a “lawyer” came on the phone and instructed Rogers to go to his local Walmart. The lawyer told Rogers to bring $2,300 and wire the money to pay the bond.
Rogers was horrified. He didn’t want his grandson to be in trouble, so he gathered up the money and went to his local Walmart ready to wire the cash. Scams like this occur all the time. And Rogers would have become the latest victim – except an unlikely hero stepped in to save him. The Walmart store associate heard why Rogers was wiring the money and refused to let him do it.
Cashier Audrella Taylor became suspicious once she heard Rogers reasons. He tried to change her mind and told her about how his grandson was in jail and needed $2300 wired for bond money.
She stopped him in his tracks, “I’m not going to let you send that money. I think you are being scammed.”
Instead of letting him send the money, Taylor instructed Rogers to call his grandchildren and ask if they’re in jail. He did and learned that there was no car accident. Instead, Rogers’ grandson was safe at college getting educated.
Taylor knew that Rogers was being scammed when she found out the boy’s mother, Rogers’s daughter had not been contacted. Why would the grandson or the police not contact his mother first? Why would they bypass the parent to speak to the grandparent? That just sounded like a red flag to the astute Taylor.
When the Walmart manager Dominic Gross learned about Taylor’s heroism, he congratulated her. And to follow her example, Gross is now training all cashier at his Walmart location to spot suspected scams before they happen.
Instead of being scammed, Rogers had money to spend on his grandkids that Christmas.