A few weeks back Sidney resident Lola Herbert got a sketchy phone call. A young voice on the other end greeted her as grandma. “I haven’t talked to you for a while,” he said.

He told her who he was. “I thought he said Shea, but I wasn’t sure,” she said. Herbert has a grandson by the same name, but the voice kept cutting out so she couldn’t be sure. Herbert asked for his name again. And he repeated “Shea.” “I thought, ‘It doesn’t sound like Shea.’ ” Could it be her other grandson Colten playing a trick on her? “Shea” said no.

The chit chat began. “Did you start your new job yet,” she asked. He said he hadn’t, and he’d just arrived in New York City, N.Y., on business. Herbert’s grandson Shea actually lives and works in Seattle, Wash., but was putting in for a new position with his company. Then it began. The story. “Shea” said he recently took out some VIPs for work at a restaurant, and he had maxed out his credit card. “And he said, ‘Yeah, and on the way home I got picked up for a DUI,’ ” Herbert said, and was apparently in jail. He said he drank two glasses of wine, which, by the way, her grandson doesn’t drink.

“Shea” asked for some help, so Herbert asked him how much he needed. “Shea” let her talk to the officer, who said her grandson Shane is in custody. Shane. Not Shea. “He’s really upset because he has to call you and because he really didn’t want to,” he said, going into detail.

Herbert asked twice for a birth date on her grandson. “I don’t have the papers here right now,” the officer said. Then she asked to talk to her supposed grandson again. She wasn’t allowed to because he’d been taken back to his cell, and he only had one phone call.

Herbert told the officer she doesn’t have a grandson named Shane. So he asked for a name. Which one, she said, since she has five grandsons. “And the line went dead.”

She called her grandson Shea who was still in Seattle and confirmed that, no, he doesn’t drink wine and he hadn’t started hi s job.

Scams like these happen all the time across the country, and it’s happening here at home. Unfortunately, these target the nation’s most vulnerable: the elderly. “They’re preying on people who want to help a family member. They’re working on emotions,” Assistant Sidney Police Chief Bob Burnison said in an article last year when the Herald first reported the scam. The elderly are also much more trusting.

Burnison has been investigating scams that are reported, and most of the time they’re difficult to solve.

The scammers usually call homes randomly or may even know the unsuspecting victim. If they don’t know the victim, they take a guess or bet on the grandparent to give them a name. “What grandparent wouldn’t want to help their grandchild?” Burnison said, urging people not to give any information.

Fortunately, Herbert didn’t give in. In fact, she knew almost instantly something wasn’t right. For one, the voice didn’t sound like her grandson. He doesn’t drink wine. And the dead giveaway: The officer gave the wrong name and couldn’t give any information.

Herbert recalled credit card information was requested. “But by then, I was really shooken. I thought, ‘I’m getting scammed.’ ” She decided to play along with the officer. She asked for information that only the person would know. “Ask for information,” she advises. “If nothing else, their birth date.”

A scam similar to Herbert’s also happened to Enid Huotari’s mother in Arizona, Adrienne Hoverson, who a year ago received a phone call from someone claiming to be Huotari’s son, David. “I’ve got a little bit of a problem. I’ve done something stupid,” he told her. He said he was with a friend in Regina, Saskatchewan, they’d been drinking and driving and were in jail. He needed money for bail.

“David” asked her not to tell anyone since Mom would be angry. Just wire a couple thousand dollars. Hoverson insisted he call Huotari, but the line went dead. “At that point my mom really didn’t know what was going on,” Huotari said. So she called her daughter and recounted the story. Huotari called her son who was in class in North Dakota.

“I think it definitely pulls at the heart strings,” Huotari said, thankful her mom didn’t give in.

Herbert and Huotari say they hope they can warn others since they’ve heard of others were duped. Burnison also asks scams be reported. “We hope that they tell us about it,” he said. “Sometimes people are embarrassed to call us, or they’re embarrassed to tell their family what they did. We need to know about these things so we can tell people.”