Rylie could use help to recover from heartbreaking scam

Nursing student scammed out of her money needed to do Study Abroad as she's nearing the end of nursing school.

Many of you know our sweet girl, Rylie.

She is in her second-to-last semester of nursing school. At the end of the semester, she is scheduled to go on a study abroad that is required to complete part of the nursing program.

Unfortunately, this evening, Rylie was the victim of a horrible scam. She received a phone call that showed it was coming from our local county sherrif's department. The caller identified himself as a deputy telling her she had a warrant out for her arrest. He had a lot of personal information on her and told her they had a deputy waiting at her door to arrest her when she got home from her clinical rotation at the hospital. She was so scared. The caller transferred her to "another officer in the department" to discuss the matter. They had police scanners and other official police noises in the background.

Now Rylie is this girl that pretty much does everything by the book and she was really freaking out. She was told she was not allowed to discuss this with anyone and to do so would result in further criminal charges. They told her that she could pay the fine to get out of the warrant arrest. They were basically threatening her life. She didn't know what to do and she was so convinced this was a legit phone call. She was scared to go home and scared to call us, her parents. She did everything she could think of to come up with the money to pay the warrant fine. Money cleared her account and she called us in hysterics and we could not get her to stop crying. Yet, she couldn't tell us what was wrong because she'd been threatened. All she told us what that we should call the sheriffs department to see if they would tell us anything because she couldn't. We didn't know what to do to help her. We called their office but it was after hours. Fortunately, Aaron had saved the number for a detective that came to our house the day we lost Emorie. He called her and explained what was happening, and that we had no idea what was wrong with our daughter, but only someone from the sheriff's department could tell us. This sweet lady listened to Rylie the best she could in Rylie's hysterics and started telling her that she did NOT have a warrant out for her arrest and that it is a scam... a very convincing scam and that she can calm down. However, at this point, Rylie is so very upset that she couldn't calm down and was still afraid to go home. But hearing this news from the deputy transition Rylie from her panic to sobs of "I'm sorry."

As parents, we stepped in to try to do anything we could to help salvage anything we could for her, but the bank said they could only do a disputed transaction request and that it probably would fail. Tried going the merchant transaction point with no luck. She's out thousands of dollars, money that was supposed to be used to pay for her tuition and study abroad. She didn't even have funds left in her account for rent, groceries, or gas.

Yes, as calm people not in the middle of a very heightened mentally alert moment, there are certainly red flags. But for Rylie, this was real... very real and she was scared and panicked and was "not allowed to talk to ANYONE about this." With all that Rylie has gone through over the past few years, including losing our sweet Emorie, she just couldn't think straight. She's not a dumb person, in fact she's quite smart, but this was something that she just didn't know what to do. Of course she's still upset, but now worried about her future and her commitment for her study abroad and how she will be able to complete it and, thus, graduate from nursing school.

We're hoping that, should people be able to help with even a little that it will help alleviate her panic and help her get past this horrible new hurdle.

If you can help with even a few dollars, thank you so much. And, if not, we understand. Just keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

SHE WILL BE AN EXCELLENT NURSE ONE DAY.. hopefully soon.

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