Senior loses $450k savings in traffic ticket scam! Retiree now struggles to trust modern technology

More than 400 unread messages now sit on 74-year-old ‘Grandma’ Thompson’s phone — a digital graveyard she refuses to touch after a traffic ticket scam cost her more than $450,000 in personal savings.
“I don’t look,” she said, her tone laced with fear, having become a victim of the text-message phishing scam recently. “I have over 400 messages. I don’t know if it’s from Digicel, I don’t know if it’s from Flow, I don’t know if it’s from JPS. I don’t know who it come from, but me not opening it,” Thompson told THE WEEKEND STAR.
“I’m not taking any chance with that any more. Send me in my mail, let me go pick it up at the post office, because since that’s the safest option, I’ll work with the safest option even if it’s delayed.”
Thompson’s digital nightmare began with a message that appeared to be an official traffic violation notice from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).
It claimed Thompson had breached Section 34 of the Road Traffic Act after her vehicle was allegedly caught travelling at 57 kilometres (km) per hour in a 40 km/h zone on July 10, 2025.
The message appeared convincing. It contained what looked like an official notice number, promised a 50 per cent discount if the supposed fine was paid within seven days, and provided a website where Thompson could supposedly view a photograph of the violation or lodge a complaint.
The JCF has since confirmed that the message is a scam and urge members of the public to refrain from clicking the links, providing personal or financial information and or making any payments through the website provided in the messages.
However, that warning came too late for the retiree, who had received the ‘scam’ notice via WhatsApp days before. She told THE WEEKEND STAR that she was puzzled as she had not been stopped by the police and said she normally drives within the speed limit. But wanting to see what the alleged violation was about, she clicked the link.
That decision would cost her dearly.
“It posed as a $10,000 ticket. I was attempting to pay, but then I realised the money was gone, I couldn’t believe it. That is almost all my savings. At my age, you don’t just get up tomorrow and make back $450,000,” Thompson said.
She added: “My card information is saved on my phone, so when I went on the website to pay the $10,000, it automatically put in the card information for me. I tried to make the payment, but it wasn’t going through, so I just came off the website. I didn’t think anything more of it,” Thompson recalled.
She would soon discover that something was very wrong.
About a day later, while shopping at a local supermarket, Thompson tried to pay for her groceries and her card was declined.
“I went to pay for my things and the card [was] declined. I tried it again, and it [was]declined again. That’s when I knew something wasn’t right, because I knew I had money on the card,” she said.
She went to her bank, seeking answers.
““When I went to the bank, that’s when they told me that $450,000 was transferred from my account to somewhere in Mexico. Mexico! Mi never yet go no Mexico. I reported it to the bank, and the police told me it was a scam, [because] they don’t send no message like that. The message stated Jamaica Police Force, but its Jamaica Constabulary Force,” she said.
Cybersecurity experts have warned that subtle differences in an organisation’s name can be an important clue that a message is fraudulent, as scammers often mimic legitimate institutions while using small details to give themselves away.
In Thompson’s case, she had not recognised the difference, and by the time it was pointed out to her, the damage had already been done.
“When I realised the money was gone,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
“That is my savings. At my age, you don’t just get up tomorrow and make back $450,000. That is money I put down to help take care of myself and my household.”
Thompson said the matter remains under investigation, but she has yet to recover the money.
“The worst part is, I wasn’t doing anything that I thought was foolish. I genuinely believed the message was legitimate,” Thompson said.
The loss has left Thompson suspicious of virtually everything that now lands on her phone.
“So now, every time something comes on my phone, I wonder if this is another way somebody is trying to get me,” she said.
And as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly capable of producing convincing images, videos and voices, Thompson said the problem has become even more difficult for people like her who are trying to separate fact from fiction.
“If a young person can look at something AI make and can’t tell the difference, imagine me at 74 trying to figure it out,” she said.
Thompson believes younger people have an advantage because many have grown up alongside rapidly changing digital technology.
“The difference for me is that younger people grow up with these things and probably know where to look, or who to ask,” she said.
“Me, I see something that looks real, sounds real, and has the name of the organisation on it, so how am I supposed to know that it isn’t real?”
Her concerns do not stop at banking scams.
Thompson, who is diabetic, said she has also encountered online videos featuring people who appear to be doctors recommending products and remedies for diabetes.
She recalled following advice from one apparent doctor who recommended a bush remedy for the darkening of her toenails. She tried the remedy, but said she has not seen the improvement she expected.
“It look like my toenails dem a get darker. I don’t see it happening,” she said.
Thompson cannot say whether the person in the video was a genuine medical professional, someone falsely presenting as one, or whether the video itself was AI-generated.
“Before, you could tell certain things were fake. Maybe the spelling was wrong or something didn’t look right. Now, these things look real,” she said.
“You see somebody who looks like a doctor, they sound like a doctor, and they’re telling you what to use. So, when everybody says we must learn how to identify what is fake, my question is: how? If it looks real to me, what am I supposed to look for?”
The experience has pushed Thompson towards doing business face-to-face whenever possible. But even that is becoming harder as more services move online.
“Why can’t they offer services for senior citizens who really don’t understand these things? You tell me to go on [the] website. I don’t know nothing about any website. I’m scared to even go on any website now.”
Her concerns come as the Government seeks to improve digital literacy among older Jamaicans.
The National Council for Senior Citizens, an agency of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, has partnered with HEART/NSTA Trust on the Get Connected Digital Literacy Programme, which provides seniors with training in basic computer operations, Internet use and online communication.
Thirty-seven seniors between 62 and 89 graduated from an eight-week digital literacy course in 2025, while a third cohort began training in January this year.
But for Thompson, learning how to operate a smartphone or computer is no longer enough. The bigger challenge, she said, is knowing whether the information appearing on those devices can be trusted.
“Technology has always been advancing and I was able to move with it. I could use my phone and do what I needed to do. But I never had hiccups this big,” she said.
“Now you have AI, you don’t know if the person you’re looking at is real, you don’t know if the message is real, you don’t know if the news is real.”
“So I keep asking myself, where does it end?”