Notes · Scams

How do I spot a grandparent scam, and what should my family set up tonight?

By Logan Shimmer · October 5, 2026 · About a 6-minute read

Short version: the call that sounds like your grandkid crying from a jail cell is a script, the voice can be faked from a few seconds of a TikTok, and the fix is one word your family agrees on at dinner tonight. The longer version is below, with the numbers, because the numbers are what finally get people to actually do the dinner part.

The size of it

The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report added up $20.9 billion reported lost to online fraud in one year. That works out to about $40,000 a minute, around the clock. And that is only what people reported. Plenty of folks never tell anyone, because they feel foolish, which is exactly the feeling the scammer was counting on.

The FTC’s report on protecting older consumers, covering 2024 to 2025, has a chart I show in every talk. It is the median loss per person, by age, for people who reported losing money. Younger people get scammed more often. People past retirement age lose more when it happens, because that is where the savings are.

That last row is a grandparent. That is who this article is for, and for the son or daughter who is going to read it first and then call them.

Every scam is the same three moves

I have looked at a lot of these now, from the fake Medicare call to the fake Amazon email to the fake grandkid, and underneath the costume they are all the same play. Once you can see the three moves, the costume stops mattering.

Authority. Somebody official, or somebody you love. The sheriff. The bank. Medicare. Your grandson. Anyone you would not want to hang up on.

The Ask. Money, a code off your phone, remote access to your computer, or the sneaky one, “just confirm” your account number so they can “verify” you.

Urgency. Tonight. Before Friday. The warrant goes out at five. And the tell that beats all the others: “don’t tell anyone.” Nobody with a real emergency has ever asked you to keep it a secret from the rest of the family.

Authority plus an ask plus a clock. If you hear all three on one phone call, you are in a scam, and you can skip figuring out which one.

The grandparent scam, specifically

The phone rings, or a voicemail lands. It sounds like your grandchild. They are upset. They were in a wreck, or they got pulled over and there was something in the car, and now they are in jail. There is a lawyer, or a bail bondsman, or a “public defender,” and someone needs a few thousand dollars tonight, by gift card, wire, or a courier who will come to the door. And please, please don’t tell Mom.

A few years ago the voice was a stranger doing a sobbing impression and hoping the panic covered for it. Now it can be your grandchild’s actual voice. Voice cloning tools need only a few seconds of audio to copy someone, and a few seconds is one Instagram story or one video from a birthday party. The scammer finds the grandkid on social media, lifts the audio, finds Grandma’s number from the same page, and dials.

The FTC’s 2025 report says people reported losing more than $5 million to these family and friend distress scams in 2025. Remember the part about only counting what got reported.

What to set up tonight: the family word

Pick one word. Only the family knows it. Agree that anyone calling about money, bail, or an emergency has to say it, no matter how much they sound like themselves. If they cannot say the word, hang up and call the grandchild directly on the number you already have in your phone. Not the number that just called you. The one that was already there.

Do this at dinner. It takes two minutes and it is a little bit fun, which is why it actually sticks. The only rule for the word is that it cannot be something a stranger could pull off Facebook. Not the dog’s name, not the street you grew up on, not the lake house. Those are on your profile already. Pick something dumb and specific. The family that picked “meatloaf” is doing it right.

And tell the grandkids why. A college kid who knows the word exists is also a college kid who understands that their public videos are raw material, and who might make their account private this week.

Three habits that beat every scam

The word handles the grandparent call. These three habits handle everything else, and they are what I actually want a room to walk out with.

Hang up and call back on a number you already have. The bank’s number is on the back of the card. Medicare’s number is on the Medicare card. Your grandson’s number is in your phone. Real organizations do not mind if you call them back. Scammers hate it, because the number they called from goes nowhere.

Never move money or read a code to someone who called you. You can do business with your bank when you call your bank. Nobody who dials in gets gift cards, wire transfers, your password, or the six-digit text code. That code is the key to your account, and the only person who ever asks for it over the phone is the person trying to break in.

Say it out loud to someone else before you act. Scams work in private. Walk the phone to your spouse, your neighbor, the front desk, or call your daughter and tell her what the caller said. Out loud, in front of another human, the story nearly always falls apart in about one sentence.

If it already happened

First, no shame. Smart people get hit every day, and the whole operation is built by professionals whose only job is making smart people panic. Here is the order of operations.

Call the bank’s fraud line, on the number on the back of the card. If it was a gift card, call the gift card company. Sometimes money can be stopped if you move fast. Then report it atreportfraud.ftc.gov andic3.gov. Those reports are how the FBI number above gets built, and they are how patterns get spotted.

Then tell someone. Not just because it helps. Because the second scam is coming. A week or two later, a very kind person will call and say they are from a recovery service, or the bank, or the government, and they can get your money back for a fee. They know you lost money because they are the ones who took it. That call gets the same treatment: hang up, call back on a number you already have.

Want me to say this to a room?

I give a free 30-minute talk on all of this called Don’t Get Robbed Online. It is for senior living communities, churches, clubs, and the folks who answer phones at banks and agencies, who are often the last person a scam victim talks to before the money moves. I show a cloned voice live, walk through the three moves, and get the room to pick a family word before they leave.

If the problem is more personal than a room, like your mom keeps getting these calls and nobody can figure out her phone, that is the other half of what I do. Techie Grandkid does $80 in-home visits in Stillwater, and setting up call blocking and going through the scam basics at the kitchen table is a very normal visit.

I also run Shimmer Labs, where I wrote a longer piece onhow to spot AI scams aimed at business owners, if the person in your life who needs this runs a company instead of a recliner.

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