Helene victim scammed out of $40,000 while working desperately to find his still-missing wife
SANFORD, N.C. (WTVD) -- A financial setback for Hurricane Helene victim Rod Ashby. A scam has taken nearly $40,000 from him as he is desperately still searching for his wife, Kim.
ABC11 first told you about Rod and Kim Ashby, a Sanford couple who were at their mountain home in western North Carolina when Helene hit. The Ashby's home in Elk Park, near Banner Elk, was swept away by flood waters with them inside.
The couple was holding onto each other until they hit a tree and got separated. Rod made it to safety; he hasn't seen Kim since.
Days after Helene, Rod and crews searched for Kim, but more than a month after Helene hit, the search continues.
"We just we want to have the closure. I mean, no one wants to leave their loved ones on a mountainside," Rod's daughter Ansley Ashby said.
To get that closure Rod wants to continue searching for Kim. He lost his truck in Helene as the thick mud and waters destroyed it.
He is currently staying with family in Pittsboro and wants to buy a new truck to continue searching for Kim in the mountains.
"All he wants to do is get back out there, be able to take resources to the people that are doing search and rescue, and help out as much as he can, but it's really hard to navigate the roads without a four-wheel drive vehicle, and we just don't have another one. So he was just trying to get a truck back so he could go," Ansley added.
In his search for a new truck, Rod found a 2020 Ford F-350 for $38,900 on a website that claimed to be a Colorado car business that only sold repossessed cars.
It was a deal Ansley said she was skeptical about. Still, she talked to the salesman on the phone, received emails about the deal, got a contract, and even obtained a bill of sale.
"Everything checked out to me. The email matched, the phone numbers matched up, everything seemed legit," she said.
Rod wired the money and got a confirmation that said the truck would be shipped within days.
"He was hopefully supposed to have the truck by the 30th and he could be back up in the mountains by now and then that's kind of when things started to go wrong," Ansley added.
Terribly wrong, as they noticed the truck still listed for sale on the website, and quickly learned the deal was a scam. In reality, the website was just a copycat site of a real car business.
SEE ALSO | 'Scammers are everywhere,' NC Insurance Commissioner warns in wake of destruction left by Helene
The Ashbys contacted the banks involved and filed a fraud report and tried to put a stop to the wire transfer, but they were told it could take up to 90 days for a response, which Ansley said was too long to wait.
"Imagine if it was your wife, your son, anybody out there like you want to be there, you want to be searching, you want to find them just like everyone else does. So I think it's it was just like another gut punch to him of, 'OK, well, now, this went wrong to and now this set me back even further,'" Ansley said.
Rod has filed a police report and said officers are investigating.
Troubleshooter Diane Wilson talked to the owner of the legitimate Colorado car dealership the scammer was impersonating. He said for the last several months, he's received so many calls daily from people who thought they were buying a car from him, instead, it was the scammer. He said the scammer was underpricing vehicles to make them appealing to people and for them to let their guard down. He also said he's cooperating with law enforcement.
Wilson also tried to reach the scammer, but the website is now no longer working, an email to the company came back as undeliverable and their phone number just rings busy.
SEE ALSO | Need for donations and volunteers still strong two weeks after Helene
Wilson also reached out to the two banks involved in the wire transfer. One replied with the following statement:
"We value the privacy and security of our member's financial information very seriously. As a result, we can only disclose information about account specific questions and procedures to the member only."
The best advice when buying a car online is you can never be too careful. It's very easy for a scammer to duplicate a sales listing and a website to make it appear legitimate.
