Widowed Long Island Grandmother Bilked Out Of Life Savings By Cruel Phone Scammer

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A recently widowed grandmother from Long Island fell victim to a cruel phone scam.

Police said a fake agent claimed to be from the IRS, and now her life savings is gone.

As CBS2's Jennifer McLogan reported, Mary Van Essendelft was recovering from a double mastectomy, and being treated for Parkinson's when her husband Thomas died.

Several weeks later a phone call came to her West Sayville home.

"It was early evening, and I was home here alone and he says to me, 'this is the IRS," she said. 

The widow's six children are grown up. Her son Warren with special needs, lives with her and works part-time as a dishwasher. The fake federal agent told her that Warren had not properly paid his taxes for a decade. He said if he didn't pay, he would be put in jail.

She felt compelled to obey.

"He said don't tell anybody, don't call anybody because your house is bugged," she said.

The scam artist seemed to know everything about her life and bank account.

"So that's when it started. I would have to go out first thing in the morning, get home much money he asked for, take it to whatever bank he wanted me to," she said.

She got into the family car that she hadn't driven for years -- never before pumping her own gas.

Driving for hours each day, over parts of two weeks, Van Essendelft followed the instructions of the scammer, barking orders over his cell phone.

She said she was afraid and ashamed to tell her children, and gave varying amounts of money.

"Whatever he wanted, sometimes as little as two or three-thousand, other times as high as twenty-thousand," she said.

He told her Warren's name would be cleared if she withdrew from her bank and wired it into various Wells Fargo or Bank of America accounts.

"He sounded very professional, like an Indian accent. Very business like," she said.

Soon her life savings was gone -- almost $100,000.

"I said I have no more to give you. You have taken everything," she said.

The scam left her feeling empty and lost. Finally, she confided in her children, Suffolk Police, and the FBI.

"The detective took all the reports, and said it's very hard to trace this back to anybody," she said.

It was a humiliating lesson for the cherished grandmother.

"Church and prayers and love of everybody, that will pull me through," she said.

The IRS told her it never contacts taxpayers by phone.

The FBI said the well organized scam has victimized dozens of senior citizens nationwide.