A tech said there were ‘foreign intruders’ on his computer. So a Bluffton man paid $13.5K

A Bluffton man thought he was investing in fixing his computer, but was scammed out of $13,500 Sunday, according to a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office report.

The man got a call about 1 p.m., from someone he thought was a representative of Premium Techie Support, a company he had been paying since June for virus protection, the report said.

The representative told him he had “three foreign intruders on his computer” and needed to make payments to fix the issue, the report said. The representative told the man to purchase gift cards to pay for the protection, the report said.

The man went to the closest Kroger and bought 30 Google Play gift cards and gave the information to the person on the phone. He then bought three more gift cards to pay for an “IRS charge” the representative told him about, the report said.

The man also gave the representative his debit card number, but told them there was no money to take because he’d spent everything in his checking and savings accounts on the gift cards, the report said.

Deputies told the man to block the numbers used by the “agency” and gave him advice on how to avoid possible future scams, the report said.