About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (July 17, 2024)
B3 OUR REGION John Chambliss I Managing Editor 770-718-3407 I news@gainesvilletimes.com The Times, Gainesville, Georgia Midweek Edition-July 17-18, 2024 Woman charged with DUI, Gonzalez- Gonzalez BY NICK WATSON nwatson@gainesvilletimes.com Editor’s note: This published in a previous E-Paper edition and is being provided here for piint-only readers. A Gainesville woman was charged with driving under the influence and leaving the scene after hitting a Hall County deputy with one of her side mirrors Saturday, July 13, on Atlanta Highway, according to authorities. Heidy Gonzalez-Gonzalez, 45, was also charged with vio lating the open container law and Georgia's “Move Over" law for police and EMS. She was booked Sunday, July 14, in to the Hall County Jail and released on an $11,660 bond. A Hall County Sheriff's Office deputy made a traffic stop around 10:40 p.m. Sat urday in the Thurman Tanner Parkway area while Gonzalez- Gonzalez was heading north bound on Atlanta Highway. hitting deputy The Sheriff's Office said the Gainesville woman did not move over and struck the patrol vehicle with her side mirror. “She also hit the deputy with the passenger side mir ror, causing an injury to his upper arm," according to the Sheriff's Office. “Following the collision, Ms. Gonzalez- Gonzalez continued driving northbound.” Gonzalez-Gonzalez was arrested roughly a half mile away on Valley Green Drive. The deputy was taken to the hospital and released Saturday night. The Sheriff's Office did not have any information on how fast the driver was going. ‘I was like a robot’ Vickie Masters looks through paperwork Monday, July 1, about her contact with a scammer. The Gainesville woman was scammed out of $5,000 after receiving a call and texts from a woman claiming to be with Publishers Clearing House say ing that she had won $3.5 million. Scott Rogers The Times Vickie Masters thought she won S3.5M, then lost $5K BY BEN ANDERSON banderson@gainesvilletimes.com Editor’s note: This published in a previous E-Paper edition and is being provided here for print-only readers. For about five hours, 66-year- old Vickie Masters thought she was a millionaire. It was the morning of June 6, and she got a call from a woman who identified herself as a representative of Publish ers Clearing House, a com pany known for its big-money sweepstakes. Masters and her husband had entered the sweepstakes many times before, and today was the day that it would finally pay up. “They said that they had a special drawing for senior citi zens and that I had won $3.5 million (and) $5,000 a month for life,” Masters said. She was also the winner of a brand-new Mercedes Benz SUV in the color of her choice, the sky-blue cherry on top of her new mountainous fortune. “There's no gimmick, no catch, just free money waiting to be given away in our online sweepstakes to good people like you,” the company pros elytizes on its website. True to the last part of that pitch, Masters didn't immedi ately think of herself when she imagined how she would spend the money. She thought instead of her son and daughter and of her five grandchildren. She also thought of her church. “I never have been a materi alistic person for myself,” she said. “I've always been more for giving to others.” But surely there must have been something that she had been yearning to check off her bucket list, perhaps the obliga tory trip to Hawaii. “Well, we just got back from Hawaii,” she said. “So that was the biggest thing on my bucket list, was Hawaii.” A woman of compact stature, a slight hunch, a shuffling step and a sweet southern manner, Masters wants for little at this stage of her life. A hairdresser of nearly 50 years, she is now retired along with her husband, and the two live comfortably enough in their modest ranch- style home in Gainesville. But this good luck came with one small catch. In order to receive her prize money, Masters would need to withdraw $5,000 from her personal bank account and deposit the money into a sepa rate account in the form of a cashier's check. “They told me I had to write a cashier's check... and take it to Chase Bank,” she said. “They gave me the routing number, and they said ... Publishers' sweepstake was paying most of the taxes, but my responsibility was $5,000, and if I would do that, they would have it coming down my driveway that day.” Masters dutifully carried out her instructions and texted the woman a picture of the deposit slip. “I was like a robot,” she said. “I did exactly what they told me to do.” Masters returned home. Sev eral hours later around 2 p.m., the woman called Masters back that they had just landed in Atlanta and would soon be delivering her check. She sent Masters a point-of-view cell phone video of someone off- boarding a plane. But there was one more hitch. “They said that in order to get the check across the state, I had to send them $8,000,” Mas ters said. If she harbored any skepti cism about this step, it was quickly quelled in a subsequent phone call with a person who claimed to work for the IRS. She was even sent a picture of a draft copy of her $3.5 million check from Chase Bank. “It was so convincing,” she said. So, she hopped back in her car for a second trip to the bank. But as Masters was about to pull out of the neighborhood, her son Sean pulled in. He had just gotten off work and was coming to pick up his kids, who were being babysat by Masters and her husband. They pulled up alongside each other and rolled down their windows. Sean could tell that his mother wasn't quite herself. “I was like, ‘What are you doing?” he asked her. “And she was not there. You could see (it in) her eyes.” In a hypnotic, almost manic state, she told her son the good news. “I'm going to take care of y'all,” she said, explaining that she would be able to pay off his and his sister's houses and cars and pay off all of their debts. Sean knew right away that this must be a scam. “Mom, no you're not, wake up,” he said. “It's not real.” “No, Sean, it's real,” his mother insisted. “It's real. It's real. It's real.” “I got to go to the bank, I got to go now,” she said, and drove off. Earlier, Vickie's husband hadn't had any luck either in taking sense into his wife. “She took off like a kid and went and got the money,” he said. “She wouldn't listen to me at all. She finally listened to my son.” Sean pulled into the drive way and called his mother. “Mom, wake up!” he said again. “This is not real.” Then something clicked in her and she realized he may be right. “I could tell she was back,” Sean said, and he told her to go to the cops. Vickie filed a report with the Hall County Sheriff's Office, and tried to stop payment on the cashier's check, but it was too late. The check had already been cashed. But it could have been worse. “Thank God that I was there,” Sean said, his voice breaking. “Because it could have been really bad.” The Sheriff's Office declined repeated requests to interview any of its property crimes inves tigators and instead directed The Times to social media posts it has made about how to avoid scams. The agency also declined to provide informa tion about how it investigates scams, saying in an email that “we will not discuss investiga tive techniques.” Cpl. Brad Raper of the Gainesville Police Department said scam-related reports have increased “exponentially” over the last decade or so. “It's a large problem,” he said. “I've been in investiga tions since 2012, and I'd say it's probably increased tenfold.” And most the time, the vic tims never get their money back. “The chances of us get ting money back are very slim unless we catch it very quickly,” Raper said. “It's like a maze, really. We get into having to do search warrants or subpoenas to the different places to find out who the hold ers of the bank accounts are, and we have to start trying to trace down the money. And that can be a lengthy process, and a lot of times by the time we get to the end of it, that account is closed and they've moved on to another bank or another account.” Nationwide, elder fraud complaints increased by 14% in 2023, and associated losses increased by about 11%, according to the FBI's most recent Elder Fraud Report. And lest you think that this only happens to the naive or the foolish, consider the fact that the former director of the FBI and CIA, William Webster, was himself the target of elder fraud in 2014. “If it can happen to me, it can happen to you,” he says in a video on the FBI’s website. “I have seen this happen to doctors, nurses, under privileged people, just every body falls prey to these things because they're so convincing,” Raper said. The FBI's report notes that older Americans seem to be disproportionately impacted by scams and fraud. More than 101,000 people over the age of 60 say they were the victims of scams in 2023. Victims under 20, on the other hand, were the least-impacted demographic, with about 18,000 reporting scams last year. Raper's advise to people is simple: “If they are asking you to deposit money to get money, it is a scam.” “My biggest recommenda tion is, if you get a phone call from a number that is not in your phone, do not answer it, and if it is somebody that truly needs to talk to you, they will leave a voicemail or send you a text message,” he said. “That is the best way to avoid most of the telephone scams.” Vickie says the scammers still call and text her multiple times a day. She sent the scammer one text saying, “I hope you can sleep.... you win now but I will win in the end I hope you find jesus before it's (too) late.” She said losing $5,000 “stings, but it's not going to put me under.” She said she is sharing her story in the hopes that she can prevent it from happening to others. “I never thought it would happen to me,” she said. “I'm telling my story because I hope and pray that this does not hap pen to you.” BOC OKs TSPLOST for ballot BY DENISE ETHERIDGE deniseetheridge@gainesvilletimes.com Editor’s note: This published in a previous E-Paper edition and is being provided here for print-only readers. The Hall County Commission approved a resolution to place a one cent Transportation SPFOST on the Nov. 5 ballot during a voting meeting Thursday, July 11. If Hall County voters approve the TSPFOST, it will go into effect in April. County officials said that up to $390 mil lion in revenue can be collected over 6 years for transportation projects, such as roads, bridges, bicycle paths, sidewalks and accom panying infrastructure, should the referen dum pass. The Hall County Board of Elections will meet on July 16, presumably to issue the call for the vote. “Hall County has grown significantly at a rapid rate throughout the last several years, and if you frequent the county, you know that the traffic reflects that growth,” Hall County District 1 Commissioner Kathy Cooper said. “As long as this community continues to expand, we will need to ensure our roads and infrastructure are maintained and improved in order to ease congestion, improve traffic flow, and make sure our citizens and visi tors are as safe as possible when choosing to drive or walk to their destinations.” The Association of County Commission ers of Georgia recognized State Sen. Shelly Echols of District 49 and State Rep. Fee Hawkins of District 27 at the meeting for introducing changes to the new TSPFOST law. “We appreciate our local delegation, who has worked tirelessly to ensure that citizens get the final decision on whether or not to implement a Transportation SPFOST,” Hall County District 4 Commissioner Jeff Stowe said. “This is an important step for our County and all other counties in Geor gia who are seeking dedicated transportation sales tax funding.” Echols and Hawkins introduced Senate Bill 383 and House Bill 946, respectively, during the legislative sessions at the Geor gia Capitol in January. The proposed legis lation, signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp in May, changed the law requiring that all municipalities in a single county TSPFOST must sign an Intergovernmental Agreement to levy a full penny tax. The new legislation now requires only municipalities represent ing more than 50% of a county's municipal population to sign an IGA to levy the tax at a full penny. Fast year the City of Buford declined to sign such an agreement between Hall County and the cities. On June 27, Buford was among the Hall County municipalities that signed the 2024 Transportation SPFOST IGA. NGHS hit by tech outages BY DENISE ETHERIDGE deniseetheridge@gainesvilletimes.com Editor’s note: This published in a previous E-Paper edition and is being provided here for print-only readers. A software issue caused computer and phone outages over the weekend at all loca tions of Northeast Georgia Health Systems. NGHS stated that the issues were resolved on Sunday, July 14. Chris Paravate, NGHS chief information officer, released a statement Monday explain ing what caused the communication systems issues: “We experienced IT system outages Sun day morning, which we believe were inad vertently caused by a software issue with one of our vendors,” Paravate said. “We became aware of the issues around 5 a.m., which limited our ability to operate our electronic medical record and receive phone calls. It also limited the ability for people to access their records via MyChart, call our locations, and schedule appointments online. Thankfully, our nurses, physicians, and staff continued providing the same safe, high-quality care through our standard downtime procedures - while our IT teams worked with our vendors to get the impacted systems back online. We were back to business as usual by 5 p.m.”
