PayPal Impostor Scam Steals Priest's Life Savings
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 980 Ratings
🗓️ 7 March 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Retired priest, Father Robert Banzin, has devoted his life to the service of others. Now in his 80s, he continues to preach every Sunday at his Chicago-area parish. Father Bob, as he is known in his community, gets an alarming email claiming that his PayPal account had been used for a purchase on eBay. Concerned, he calls a number he believes to be PayPal's customer service and is informed that his bank account has been compromised. Within weeks, every penny of his life savings had been stolen. But all is not lost, as former students and parishioners rally to support him.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week on The Perfect Scam. |
| 0:04.0 | I googled it and I found a phone number for PayPal. |
| 0:09.0 | They emailed me and they would call me each day. |
| 0:14.0 | Tell me how are things going. |
| 0:16.0 | Now my money is saved. |
| 0:17.0 | Don't worry, PayPal took care of everything for you. |
| 0:20.0 | I said, well, this other money that I bought the Bitcoins, when am I going to get that money back? |
| 0:24.6 | That's all you get it back. Don't worry about it. |
| 0:26.6 | Welcome back to the perfect scam. |
| 0:31.6 | I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. |
| 0:35.6 | Father Robert Banzan has devoted his whole life to the service of others. |
| 0:41.4 | The retired Chicago area priest spent many years as a teacher, and even into his 80s, he still |
| 0:47.3 | teaches every Sunday with a carefully crafted homily that he spends all week preparing. |
| 0:53.2 | That keeps him young, he told me. |
| 0:55.7 | Okay, so why am I talking about a priest on the perfect scam? Well, criminals target anyone and |
| 1:02.7 | everyone, and recently, Father Bob, as former students and parishioners call him, got an alarming |
| 1:08.9 | email saying his PayPal account had been used for a purchase on eBay. |
| 1:13.4 | It was fraud, he was told, and within weeks, pretty much every penny of this humble man's humble life savings had been stolen. |
| 1:23.4 | But this story has a happy ending because former students, Father Bob hadn't heard from in decades, came running to the rescue. |
| 1:32.0 | Let's meet Father Bob. |
| 1:34.0 | Father Robert Banzan, Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Chicago. |
| 1:38.5 | I'm retired now, but I still work on Sundays. |
... |
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