State Police are investigating a report from a 75-year-old Mercer County woman who says she lost nearly $100 thousand to scammers posing as members of Best Buy’s “Geek Squad”.

The Jackson Township woman told police on Friday that she received an email from a fake “Geek Squad” account.

“Geek Squad” is an information technology service provided by electronics retailer Best Buy.

In addition to being bilked out of $98,577, the woman told police that the scammers got access to her home computer and were controlling it remotely.

There have been other reports of “Geek Squad” scams.

In late November, the Niagara County, New York Sheriff’s Office warned residents about the “Geek Squad Subscription Scam” that cost victims more than $22,000.

The scam involves sending people a subscription renewal notice from ‘Geek Squad’. The scammer wants victims to call their phone numbers and provide sensitive information such as that from credit cards.

The scam was reported in July by Virginia Commonwealth University’s phishing.net website, which exposes phishing scams and schemes.

There are a couple of identifiers that let us know this is a phishing email:

  • They are using a Gmail Account (not a Bestbuy email address)
  • There are weird grammatical problems (e.g., ‘Writing this mail’)
  • Random phone number (e.g., ‘1 (800) – 306 – 2981’)