$61K, gone just like that for Oro Valley couple. | News

Criminals stole $61,024 from Oro Valley residents Suzi and Gary Beerman.

To pay for kitchen cabinetry and countertops, the Beermans intended to electronically transfer money from retirement savings to pay a design company. Instead, those funds were swiped into the bank account of a man in Midland, Texas, then to an overseas crime ring that converted it into cryptocurrency.

The cash disappeared. It won’t be recovered.

“I got tricked, and it was just like that,” Suzi Beerman said, snapping her fingers.

 “I cried for months,” she said. “‘I did that to us. What an idiot! What is wrong with you?’”

Suzi Beerman is not an idiot, and there’s nothing wrong with her. The Beermans are educated, experienced, professional retirees, now working part-time to recover some of their losses. She is the victim of a crime, and is telling their story as a warning to others.

“I figure my energy is better spent helping other people not have it happen to them,” Suzi Beerman said. “You can swallow a lot of toxic sludge on the way to justice.”

 

They ‘wanted a great kitchen’

The Beermans moved to Oro Valley from Washington in July 2022. They bought a house, loved the view, and “wanted a great kitchen” because they love to cook and entertain, she said.

They hired a Tucson kitchen and bath remodeling business.

The couple was traveling in January when their designer asked for an electronic funds transfer to pay for cabinetry and countertops.

“They insisted they had to have the money while we were gone,” Suzi Beerman said.

She asked for and received an invoice. The remodeling business sent an account number and routing information to Beerman. That email was intercepted by the criminals, who created their own, very similar email address with a different domain name, and sent their own account and routing information back to Suzi Beerman.

“The bank sent the verification to me,” and, unknowingly, “I sent it to the fraudsters,” Suzi Beerman said. “Our next communication was from the fraudsters.” The criminals sent a quick email, reading, “Got it, thanks.”

“I didn’t realize how closely I should have scrutinized the details,” Suzi Beerman said. “I wasn’t expecting the criminals to be in the conversation. It’s not like getting targeted while walking alone down a dark alley, being able to see and feel the threat. But I have learned that every transaction could be that dark alley.”

“Anybody can create a domain,” said Brian Watson, community outreach specialist for Resources / Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly, a nonprofit that tries to protect people from fraud. “They’ve created something you can easily pass over. Who verifies domains? Maybe that’s something we all need to be doing.”

Ten days later, when “we thought this transaction was done,” the designer called the Beermans and said, “‘When are you going to pay us?’”

“‘You told us you got the money,’” Suzi Beerman replied. The designer did not.

When she realized what had happened, “I was sobbing,” Suzi Beerman said.

Wire transfer of funds is “very convenient,” Watson said. “But it also makes it much easier for criminals to get the money quicker.”

Without the money, the designer “stopped work on the project,” Suzi Beerman said. “We’re four months in, our kitchen doesn’t work. What are we going to do? We’re over a barrel.” The Beermans brought a replacement check to the designer.

In the end, the Beermans lost the stolen money, made a further withdrawal from retirement savings — they’ll be taxed on both transactions — were “fired” by their investment advisers after 30 years, and wound up in a legal dispute with the design company.

People “treated us like we were the criminals,” Suzi Beerman said. “We were stunned. We were virtually alone in this. No one’s coming to help you.”

 

Scammers are ‘very crafty’

The Beermans sought justice.

They learned the stolen sum was below the FBI’s investigation threshold; anything less than $2 million, “they’re not going to pay attention,” she said. “It’s just data.”

The Oro Valley Police Department “was the only entity that cared to investigate this,” Suzi Beerman said. OVPD detective Deren Jackson interviewed the couple, and reached out to the Midland, Texas, Police Department, where he found detective Sonya Campbell. She interviewed the man.

Campbell told Jackson she had never before “seen a grown man cry” while being interviewed. He is 48, divorced, lonely, and himself the victim of “pig butchering,” the term applied to people victimized by a fictitious online love interest.

“Somebody’s being nice to him,” Suzi Beerman said. So, he sends money. Now, he’s being used as a “money mule” to launder stolen funds.

“The money mules don’t know what’s going on, they just do what they’re told,” Watson said. “He’s a victim, but he’s also a co-conspirator. It shows how complicated these schemes can be.”

“You didn’t have to take us with

you,” Suzi Beerman said of the Midland middleman.

They didn’t know it, but the Beermans’ money sat in his Midland account for a week, then most of it — he “got to keep $11,000 of our money,” she said — was withdrawn by an overseas crime syndicate that instantly turned it into cryptocurrency. “We’ll never get that money back,” Beerman said.

“It reaches back so much further than the guy whose account got our money,” Suzi Beerman said. Offshore masterminds find people “who are basically enslaved” to meet a quota of stolen money. They work from scripts and deploy advanced technology.

“Someone runs the bots, and looks for invoices and payments,” Suzi Beerman said. “There is no legislation, no scruples, nothing to hold them back.”

“These scammers have got this down to a science, and they’re very crafty at it,” OVPD spokesperson Darren Wright said. “Scams are changing so rapidly you can’t cover everything” in a flyer, social media post, or class. “By the time we tell you about this, they’ve gone on to a new scam. It’s ever evolving.”

“It’s just nonstop,” ROSE’s Watson said. “Nothing surprises me.”

 

The wave of cybercrime

Suzi Beerman knows that, in the end, she made a mistake.

“I still get sad about it,” she said, choking up. “Emotionally, I let it happen to us. My husband’s so angry about it.”

The Beermans’ attorney, Patrick “PJ” Lopez, is “a gem,” she said. “He was so good to us. He knew what we had gone through. Our attorney, the OVPD, the Midland PD, they were fabulous. They were there to say, ‘Yes, this was a crime and should be investigated.’”

But the money is gone.

“It’s an endless source of frustration,” she said. “We’re victims of a crime. We got robbed. Somebody reached into our pocket and took $61,000, and it hurts.”

Cybercrime, Suzi Beerman said she believes, may be “the biggest transfer of wealth in American history. The money is leaving our country. Not to be nationalist, but hey, that’s our money. I worked hard for that money.”

“It’s really, really sad and disheartening to see our community members victimized like this,” OVPD’s Wright said.

Suzi Beerman is slowly finding some peace.

“Being angry or sad all the time isn’t going to get the money back,” she said.

And the kitchen is done. “It’s beautiful,” if bittersweet.