An elderly Connecticut woman was suspicious from the start. A supposed Apple Support worker told her that her laptop had been hacked and that she was under investigation for criminal activity. The story did not sound right, and she questioned it.
The scammers were ready for that. They told her West Hartford police would call and confirm everything. Soon afterward, her phone displayed the department’s real non-emergency number, and someone claiming to be an officer backed up the story.
The number was real. The call was not. Police say the scammers had spoofed the department’s caller ID, then spent months directing the woman to pack large amounts of cash into boxes for couriers to collect. Her reported loss eventually reached nearly $600,000.
More than a year after police learned about the fraud, investigators arrested 26-year-old Vishavjit Singh of Queens, New York. He was taken into custody in Delaware on Aug. 13, extradited to Connecticut and charged with first-degree larceny and interfering with an officer.
She Questioned the Apple Story. The Scammers Had an Answer Ready
West Hartford police were notified of the fraud on March 28, 2025. The woman told investigators that an error message had appeared on her laptop claiming the computer had been hacked.
She then received a phone call from a woman claiming to work for Apple Support. According to police, the caller repeated the hacking claim and told the woman that she was being investigated for criminal activity.
The woman did what people are always told to do when a strange caller starts making serious accusations: she questioned the story. That should have been the end of it. Instead, the caller told her that West Hartford police would contact her and confirm that the allegations were legitimate.
A second call soon appeared to come from the department’s non-emergency number. Someone on the line identified himself as a West Hartford police officer and backed up the first caller’s claims. Police later determined that the number displayed on her phone had been spoofed.
Months of Calls Ended With Boxes of Cash
Police said the woman remained in telephone contact with the scammers for several months. On several occasions, she was instructed to place large amounts of U.S. currency into boxes and wait for vehicles to arrive and collect them.
The total reported loss was nearly $600,000.
Boxes of cash are not standard procedure for Apple Support or a police investigation. The FBI has warned that tech-support and government-impersonation scams increasingly use couriers to collect bulk cash or gold, sometimes directly from a victim’s home.
Investigators Traced the Scheme to a Suspect in Delaware
West Hartford police worked with the U.S. Secret Service, the Hartford Police/FBI Financial Crimes Taskforce and the New York Police Department during the investigation.
Authorities eventually identified Singh as a suspect and obtained an extraditable arrest warrant. West Hartford detectives and Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice inspectors took him into custody Aug. 13 at Sussex Correctional Institution in Georgetown, Delaware.
Singh was extradited to Connecticut and charged with one count of first-degree larceny and one count of interfering with an officer. He was arraigned Aug. 14 and remained in custody on a court-set $200,000 bond. Online court records cited by We-Ha list his next appearance for Sept. 25.
Police have not publicly specified which calls or cash pickups they accuse Singh of handling personally. The charges against him remain accusations and have not been proven in court.
A Real Police Number Can Still Be a Fake Call
Seeing a local police department’s correct number on the screen would reassure plenty of people. The problem is that caller ID can be manipulated to display almost any name or number.
The Federal Trade Commission advises people who receive a suspicious law-enforcement call to hang up and find the agency’s number independently, preferably through its official website. Calling the number displayed in the incoming-call history does not prove who placed the original call.
The FTC also says legitimate security pop-ups do not tell computer users to call a telephone number. Apple similarly advises people to end suspicious calls claiming to come from the company and contact Apple through its official support channels.