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07/14/2025

AARP’s ‘Fraud Wars’ Episode 1: Judith Boivin Had $600,000 Stolen in an FBI Impostor Scam

AARP

By the time the scammers posing as law enforcement called Judith Boivin’s cellphone, they had researched their target well. They knew she’d worked as a registered nurse and a clinical social worker before becoming a licensed therapist. They knew she had worked in Belize to help children with HIV and had lived for three years in Mexico while she helped a priest establish a mission.

“I’ve been a caregiver all my life in various forms and shapes,” says Boivin, 81, who lives in Rockville, Maryland.
 

The scammers understood this. And they exploited her compassion and generosity to steal her retirement savings, nearly $600,000, leaving her with the question that plagues every fraud victim: How could this happen to me?

It seemed real
 
The call came in September 2023, while Boivin was taking her husband, Jim, 79, who has Parkinson’s disease, to a medical appointment near their home. Caller ID on her phone showed “Rockville Police.” Soon she was speaking to someone who identified himself as the then-chief of police, Victor Brito, and said her Social Security number had been linked to a crime. Because it was a federal case, he transferred her to “Wayne A. Jacobs,” an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He told her that a Mexican cartel had used her Social Security number to open bank accounts for money laundering.

 

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