A FORMER White House scientist has been targeted by heartless scammers who drained $665,000 from her savings accounts.
Frances Sharples, 73, was devastated when she realized she would have to pay taxes for the life savings that she lost to an anonymous fraudster.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
A New York City native raised by a plumber, Sharples defied expectations with a flourishing career in scientific research.
The longtime National Academy of Sciences leader, at one point worked with the White House to advise the federal government on the effects of biological weapons.
Now, her name is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
In February 2022, Sharples, who is semi-retired, was playing a Spelling Bee word game in her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC.
Suddenly, a flashing red pop-up appeared on her screen declaring her identity had been stolen, and that she needed to get in touch with Microsoft immediately, The Washington Post reported.
An 800 number was provided at the bottom of the pop-up, so Sharples called it for assistance.
She was greeted by a man who said his name was Peter Williams, a Microsoft employee.
Williams told the scientist that her account had been compromised, and helped her to download software that was meant to combat the problem.
He also urged Sharples to call the number on the back of her credit card to inform them of the issue.
She called and was greeted by Samuel Billings, who said he was with the anti-fraud unit of the Department of Commerce Federal Credit Union.
Sharples now believes her call was rerouted by Williams, and that she was chatting with another scammer trying to get at her savings.
Williams implemented classic psychological techniques designed to strike fear into scam victims.
He convinced Sharples that he was her only hope of saving her money, and made her wait for hours on end while he supposedly worked to fix the problem.
First, he asked for her to withdraw all $25,000 from her savings account at Commerce Federal Credit Union, and coached her on exactly what to tell the teller.
After successfully retrieving the money, Williams helped her create a Binance.US account and transferred the cash by using a Las Vegas-based financial firm known as Prime Trust LLC and Signature Bank.
Both Prime Trust and Signature Bank have shuttered for unrelated reasons since Sharples’ scam.
While Sharples felt that her money was finally safe, what she wasn’t seeing was all of the emails confirming it was being converted into cryptocurrency.
She believes the scammer had hacked her email to delete any confirmation on what was happening to the cash.
After the savings were successfully stolen, Williams pressured her to put all of her retirement accounts into the Binance.US fund.
Anti-fraud investigators at the credit union tried to push back on her decision, but Sharples was prepared with the perfect responses, courtesy of Williams.
The employees did as she said, and $630,000 was eventually put into the Binance.US account under her name.
It took two hours for the scammers to completely drain the account.
“It’s like being shot in the head,” she told the Post.
Sharples got concerned after Williams started pressuring her to transfer yet another retirement account and wondered when she would have access to the money.
She got back in touch with the TIAA fraud investigator, who told her it looked like she’d been taken.
She confronted Willams about his assessment and was cursed out before the call was dropped and the phone numbers were killed.
But the torture didn’t end there.
Sharples learned the IRS would charge her hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes for transferring the money from the tax-deferred account, as it’s been classified as a distribution.
Now, she’s wrought with shame and fear over how she will pay back the money.
“Everyone has said, ‘You shouldn’t feel that way.’ At the end of the day, I do. I feel that way,” Sharples told the Post.
“I’m never going to stop feeling like it was my fault, because I made a stupid mistake, and I already paid a terrible price.”
Lawmakers like Senator Robert Casey Jr (D-PA.) are attempting to reintroduce laws that will protect scam victims from huge tax bills, but until a change is made, Sharples will have to pay.