In April, a Billings 85-year-old woman began sending a scammer large sums of money after receiving suspicious emails that her PayPal account had fraudulent activity.
Over the course of several weeks, the woman ended up losing an estimated $130,000 in the alleged scam.
The woman's family turned to lead private investigator with Elite Investigations, Michael Toth, to take over the case. Now, several months later, Toth is seeking assistance from the U.S. Department of Justice to capture the perpetrator.
Learn more about fraudsters' digital scams tactics in the video below:
In late August, Toth reached out to MTN about an alleged PayPal scam he had been working on. Toth said it was important to inform the public about this scam flooding the Billings community.
At the time, Toth had stated that the victim met a woman outside of her Billings independent living facility, who went by the name Kathy. The suspect would take the victim to a nearby ATM several times over the course of a month and had the victim withdraw $10,000 to $14,000 from the ATM each time.
After further investigation with Billings police, Toth believes the perpetrator, whom the victim was seeing in person, lives in the United States, and Toth has tracked down a suspect in another state.
"This overseas (scam company) did send a lady from out of state here to get money from the victim," Toth said Wednesday.
Now that Toth and Billings police have a suspect who resides in the United States, Toth is seeking assistance from the U.S. Department of Justice.
According to Toth, fraudsters are becoming more dangerous in their scam techniques, especially with improving technology.
"They're getting worse and worse," he said. "Just my limited experience of working with AI with my business and such, and the amazing stuff that can be done, I can only imagine what these fraudsters are going to start doing with AI."
Toth typically works on 10 cases at a time at his practice, and many are scam-related. After 30 years in the industry, Toth believes lots of scammers tend to manipulate their victims in a similar way.
"They start off slow, just talking with them, being friends with them, and then they just slowly start asking for things. They build their trust," he said.
With this in mind, Toth reached out to Assistant U.S. Attorneys Benjamin Hargrove and Colin Rubich, who specialize in white collar crimes and fraud, for assistance in his PayPal scam case.
On Wednesday evening, Hargrove and Rubich held a seminar at the Billings Public Library to inform residents about rampant scams in the community. According to the attorneys, the Billings community is suffering from elder fraud, fake government documents, Cryptocurrency, and check-kiting scams.
For instance, Rubich described a recent scam where a Billings resident was sent a false government document claiming he had missed jury duty, and a warrant was out for his arrest. The document had a false signature from U.S. District Judge Susan Watters (who is a real sitting judge), and claimed the man must pay the Billings government to avoid arrest.
"It was interesting to hear from the U.S. Attorney's office and talk to them. And pretty much... every scam they've talked about, I've been hired by a family or two to work," said Toth.
On Thursday evening, Toth alerted MTN that a special agent with the IRS, who was contacted by the U.S. Attorney's office, was looking into the PayPal case. Toth said he hopes to expedite the case with the federal government's help.
Toth suggests digital-scam victims reach out to authorities immediately.
"The quicker you get to me or to the police department, we gather enough evidence to hopefully get justice and recover some of the money," said Toth.
See MTN's previous reporting for this story:
