Philadelphia Man Lost Over $1M In Back-To-Back Scams
Philadelphia Man Lost Over $1M In Back-To-Back Scams — Here Are The Red Flags To Watch Out For
Vawn Himmelsbach Tue, June 24, 2025 Moneywise
Joe Subach was just trying to send some money to a friend. But one phone call later, with a woman named ‘Daisy,’ and his financial situation was forever changed.
Subach was the victim of two back-to-back scams — one that even involved him handing over his precious metals to money mules — that drained him of a whopping $1 million.
“I worked 43 hard years for that,” he told NBC10 News Philadelphia.
It started out with a simple online search for Apple’s customer support number to get help sending money to a friend via Apple Pay. When he called the number, a woman picked up and said her name was Daisy, from Apple.
What he didn’t realize until later — when it was too late — is that he called a phony number and Daisy was a fraudster.
How the back-to-back scams worked
In this case, Subach was the victim of a double fraud, starting with a customer service scam and then progressing into a romance scam.
When he first called the number, he says ‘Daisy’ told him that his account had been hacked and his identity had been compromised. She then told him he needed to buy gift cards, scratch off the backs and send her the numbers, which was part of the process to protect his money.
But the scam didn’t end there. Daisy told Subach that they’d have to monitor his phone 24/7.
“And so, her number was scrolling at the top of my phone the whole time,” he told NBC10.
Over the next few months, the customer service scam evolved into a romance scam where the two would text every day — even cooking meals at the same time and sharing photos of their food.
After earning his trust, ‘Daisy’ took the scam one step further by offering to protect all of his assets.
“I told her I have gold and silver with Equity Trust Company,” Subach told NBC10. ‘Daisy’ then told him to take all of his gold and silver out of his depository and she’d have someone come to his house and pick it up. Subach said he loaded his own gold and silver — valued at $780,000 — into the back of the vehicle.
The person driving the vehicle was likely a money mule, a person who is recruited to transfer stolen or illicit funds (or, in this case, precious metals).
“We look at the money mule dynamic in two different buckets,” Nicole Senegar, the FBI assistant special agent in charge in Philadelphia, told NBC10, explaining that sometimes they are in on the scam, taking a cut, but in other cases they can be unwitting victims.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office, “Fraudsters rely on money mules to facilitate a range of fraud schemes, including those that predominantly impact older Americans, such as lottery fraud, romance scams and grandparent scams.”
How to protect yourself
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