Pennies for Paul

On Tuesday November 24th my 67 year old father received a phone call from a Washington area code phone number. The man on the phone identified himself as a federal Marshall and told my father his correct social security number and said you have taken out eight loans totaling over 337,000 dollars.  We suspect you are selling or dealing drugs. And terrified my father said “Sir i am a retired pastor and i live Paycheck to paycheck and the only loans i have is one for my car and one for my house” and they said well you have been a victim of identity theft and you need to empty your bank account immediately and put it on nike gift cards , if you read at the bottom of the gift cards it will tell you “only law officials can trade these cards in for cash” this will be how we keep your funds safe until we catch the culprit. So my dad emptied out the $1600 to his name and sent the scammer the pictures of the gift cards. Then he called again and said the culprit just applied for another 10,000 loan in your name you have to go apply for your own loan and get the money before him so we can prove your innocence and send us the money again on gift cards so we can keep your funds safe. And sadly my dad did this. He didn’t  tell anyone what was happening or about this call he said they told him it was top secret and if he told anyone they wouldn't be able to Stay on the case for him and prove his innocence he could not tell anyone until the culprit was caught. Over the next three weeks he called my dad every single day.  Escalating to a 13,000 loan and had him wrap it in tin foil put it in two notebooks two envelopes and mail it to a California address. They told him the package was lost and now he actually was in real danger of fraud for this loan. He took out another 13,000 loan as instructed and sent it to them. Then an 8,000 loan. Each time promising him they almost caught the guy but he got away and was opening more loans my dad had to beat him to go take out. In three weeks my dad sent this heartless con artist 59,000. I noticed something was wrong when my dad stopped coming to visit his granddaughter. He hadn't gone a week in her life without coming to see her. The first week i thought it was strange, the second week i was worried he was sick and not telling me, the third week he called and asked to borrow 13,000 and i knew my dad was being scammed. I pleaded with him over an hour to tell me what was happening that whoever asked for that kind of money was scamming him. I had no idea about the previous loans from the past three weeks. My father was so scared. He was crying he said he couldn't tell me until it was over or he would be in trouble. I made the decision to track his phone and found out he was still trying to take out more money so again i told him he had to tell me what was happening or he couldn't be in my life if he was hiding secrets. This broke him, but he was still terrified so he first made me turn off all the cellphones in the house. Then he made me go hide them in a other room. Then he only wrote on paper what was happening because he thought the federal marshal had tapped his phone. The more he wrote my heart broke. I told my dad that this wasn't real. None of this was real. He couldn’t accept it until my husband confirmed this was a scam. He had sent that money to a con artist and it was gone and he had nothing left. He had gone without his $5 medicine for his eyes , his power was shut off, he missed his house payment  for the first time in his life. He hadn't slept from paranoia  and daily phone calls and  fear.  His local police said there was nothing they could do. The “holidays were coming up so he would try to work on it but only had about three days to try to give some time to the case. “ 

I am raising pennies for paul to try to allow my dad to pay back all these loans so he doesn't lose his home.  He didn’t  have much, he lived paycheck to paycheck, but he was happy and loved God and his family. He has been a pastor for 45 years and loves serving the Lord and people in need. Please, help paul recover and keep his home! 

proverbs 16:8 Better to have little, with Godliness, than to be rich and dishonest.

proverbs 20:17 Food gained by fraud is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth is full of gravel.