Minnesota shipping company worker's quick thinking saves woman from $30K scam

A shipping company employee's gut instinct saved a Minnesota woman from being scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars.

A woman tried mailing a package through Graphic Mailbox in Northfield last week when a staff member noticed something strange. 

"She did seem kind of frantic, like, almost immediately," Alice Castro, an employee at Graphic Mailbox, said. "She had very specific answers to every question that I asked her, almost as if she had been rehearsing it a little bit."

The woman was also willing to pay $500 for an overnight shipment to Texas. She claimed her box was filled with cookbooks.

After Castro's manager and the police got involved, they discovered the box was actually filled with $30,000 in cash. The woman was sending that money to strangers.  

"They told her her accounts were hacked or something," Terri Sim, manager at Graphic Mailbox, said. "She said, 'You know I've never fallen for this type of thing before, but this time, I don't know what it was; they were very convincing.' I walked around the counter and gave her a hug and said, 'It's all going to be OK.'"

Since the package never went anywhere, the woman got all of her money back, including the $500 shipping fee.

Police say being asked to withdraw or ship large amounts of cash is one of the red flags they want people to watch out for; others include being asked for payment via gift cards and being told not to tell anyone about the payment. Police say you should talk to someone you trust before sending any money