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Steve’s Struggle:
How Scammers Exploited this Semi-Retired Scientist
The golden years were just starting to come into focus for Steve.
A Stanford graduate, he’d built an accomplished career as an applied scientist, even hosting a podcast that combined his love of agriculture and pop culture. But at 68, he was looking forward to a slower pace, with more time for his passions like gardening, hiking near his home in San Diego, and artwork inspired by botany, biology and the flora that defined his career for so long.
Steve wasn’t quite ready to call himself fully retired, though. He was still doing some consulting and freelance writing out of his home office. So, when he received an invoice from the Geek Squad on a Friday in 2022, he didn’t think anything of it. He had a service contract for his computer, and he knew it was up for renewal soon. But the amount of the invoice—$399—was higher than expected.
“It looked like every other Geek Squad email I’d ever gotten,” Steve said. He called the customer service number conveniently listed in the email.
Steve reached a friendly agent, who confirmed the invoice was incorrect and that he would receive a full refund. Steve just needed to download a diagnostics app, so the agent could help him fill out the necessary paperwork. Once again, Steve thought nothing of it—it was common for the Geek Squad to request remote access as part of the troubleshooting process.
There was just one problem: he wasn’t talking to the Geek Squad.
When Steve downloaded the app, criminals got full access to his computer and everything on it. They used it to access his bank accounts, move his money around, and make it appear that $20,000 had mistakenly been deposited into his account.
Now the real scam was in motion.
The agent began talking about how much trouble he would get in for the mistaken transfer. He would need Steve’s help to fix things, by initiating a wire transfer to return the money.
“It was impossible not to feel bad for the guy,” Steve said. “I wanted to help.”
Steve set out for his local bank branch. But when he got there, they wouldn’t authorize the transaction. The scammers wouldn’t be deterred. With the wire transfer off the table, the agent told Steve he could withdraw cash from the bank and use it to buy gift cards.
While he still felt sympathetic toward the agent, Steve began getting suspicious. He started asking more questions about who he was talking to, the transaction, and the gift cards. Soon, the scammer’s tactics changed: friendliness gave way to threats that his entire bank account could be shut down if he didn’t comply.
Worried that he was being blackmailed and could lose all the money in his account, Steve withdrew $12,000 from the bank. When the teller at the bank asked what the money was for, Steve said it was to pay for home renovations—the lie supplied by the scammer.
What followed was a nightmarish weekend. With stores limiting how many gift cards can be purchased in a single day, Steve scrambled around San Diego trying to find new places to buy cards. All the while, the scammer just kept calling, demanding more money as quickly as possible.
He began to fear that they would never leave him alone.
When Monday morning finally arrived, Steve went back into his bank and told them everything that was happening. They confirmed his worst suspicions: he was the victim of a fraud scam. Steve contacted law enforcement, but the damage was done.
None of Steve’s $12,000 was ever recovered, and no one was apprehended for the crime.
Steve debated sharing his story for a long time. He did not feel comfortable sharing with his friends, family, or in his professional circles that he had been duped by this type of scam. Even today, he shoulders a sense of responsibility for what happened and is worried about being taken advantage of again.
While he ultimately decided to step forward to help others learn from his experience, Steve is eager to focus on his retirement, artwork, and passions in life—and leave the events of the scam behind. It’s a common sentiment among victims of financial crime, particularly older adults, or seniors, who often don’t report exploitation and fraud.
“If sharing my story keeps this from happening to someone else, it’s worth it.”
Timea’s Journey:
From Human Trafficking Survivor to Global Advocate
Growing up in Budapest, Hungary, Timea Nagy had big dreams and the work ethic to make them a reality.
At just 13 years old, she started working in film and TV. By 16, she had started her own production company—and at 20, she was already thinking about ways to grow the business. But as time went on, revenue declined. With mounting debt, Timea came across an opportunity that was too good to pass up.
She had found a newspaper ad from a recruiting agency seeking young women to work as babysitters and housecleaners in Canada. It was a three-month job paying $1,500 a month, a huge amount for Budapest in 1998. With that kind of money, she could pay her debt and help her family, as well.
“I was so desperate to make it work,” Timea said. “I had no doubts about it being a legitimate job. I was very naïve.”
Timea arrived in Toronto with a plane ticket paid for by the agency. She was picked up at the airport and driven to a motel.
That’s when she found out the job ad was a front for something far more sinister.
“They said they were with the Ukrainian-Hungarian mafia, and I owed them a lot of money for my trip from Hungary. I would have to work as a stripper to pay off my debt—and if I refused, they would kill my family back home,” Timea said. “This was all within six hours of getting off the plane.”
Timea didn’t see any options. The traffickers had confiscated her passport and threatened her and her family. She had no money, and she didn’t speak English.
With nowhere to turn, she was forced to work as a stripper and a sex worker.
The days began to blur together. Timea and the other women under the traffickers’ control were driven from the motel to seedy nightclubs around Toronto, where they spent hours working before being shuttled back to the motel with their one meal of the day—usually fast food.
“We were prisoners, starving and scared,” Timea said. “I worked every day for three months straight. I made them more than $40,000 in cash, and it still wasn’t enough. They said I still owed them more money.”
Looming over everything was a constant threat of violence and abuse. In the worst moments, Timea found herself relying on the same coping mechanism she had developed as a child: closing her eyes and talking to herself. She would think: It will be okay
Timea knew she had to make an escape plan. She realized that while her captors would drop her off at the nightclub she worked in, they would never actually come inside. This was her opportunity.
Using a dictionary she found, Timea began communicating with the security guards at the club.
She pointed to words like help, escape, trouble, scared. When the guards understood what was happening, they were horrified and agreed to help.
One day, when the traffickers dropped her off at the club, a security guard ushered Timea through to the back, where a car was waiting to take her to an apartment where she could hide. While the traffickers came close to finding her, she was able to make it on a flight back to Hungary two weeks later.
“I had no plan. I just wanted to feel safe, sleep, breathe,” Timea said. “I didn’t want to feel like a sex object anymore.”
But Budapest didn’t provide the relief she was hoping for. Timea found herself on the run from the mafia, who wanted to kill her, and the police who wanted to charge her with using a fake passport to get back in the country.
Knowing there was no safe future for her in Hungary, Timea said goodbye to her family and flew back to Canada on her own terms, moving in with the one friend she had made after escaping her captors. She struggled to pick up the pieces of her broken life.
“I was robbed of my youth,” Timea said.
It took decades for her to feel safe and heal the scars that remained from being trafficked. But she has refused to let her suffering be in vain.
Timea is now a human rights activist dedicated to eradicating human trafficking and supporting human trafficking survivors, even serving as an advisor to the United Nations on the subject. As she travels the globe sharing her story, she reminds people that everyone has a role to play in combating trafficking.
"Human trafficking plays out in plain sight every day. Knowing the signs can save lives."
