Police: Upper Darby man stole money from seniors in phone scam

Upper Darby, Pa. (WTXF) - How often do you get scam calls? You pick up the phone and someone's asking for money saying your loved one is in trouble. Well, police say an Upper Darby man is part of a national network that has stolen hundreds of thousands in cash from helpless seniors.

"If the scammers make 1,000 phone calls a day and they get two hits this kind of money they win," Upper Darby Police Superintendent Mike Chitwood said.

Authorities are typically called after the fact when the phone scammers have got your money and there's nothing police can do. Well, that changed a couple of days ago in Upper Darby, Pa

"We got contacted by New York police and we setup a sting operation," Superintendent Chitwood said.

Superintendent Chitwood says their three-month long investigation into Upper Darby as a drop point in an elaborate, extremely lucrative phone scheme paid off Saturday morning.

"We watched the whole thing," he explained.

Police say elderly New York couple hit twice already for tens of thousands by somebody claiming their grandson was locked up was asked to send more--$6,000 cash. According to police, the address was a vacant house, but that package was sent by New York State Police.

"Sure enough, the guy pulls around twice in his car and then the third time he gets out and walks around and picks up the package and that's when we took him down," Superintendent Chitwood said.

Inside 36-year-old Richard Otoo's Upper Darby home--police say they found three more FedEx packages--each containing thousands of dollars in cash.

"Two contained $9,500 in cash and one contained $9,000 in cash," Superintendent Chitwood. "Anybody can be a potential victim--anybody."

"We guestimate $400,000 without blinking an eye. I can't tell you how many more are out there that we don't know about and that's just Upper Darby," Superintendent Chitwood said.