An Atlantic City woman called grieving widows posing as a life insurer, demanding gift cards to clear policy "arrears". 17+ victims, $100,000+. How it worked.
Social Engineering Examples·3 sources
This life insurance scam picked its targets at the worst possible moment: just after a husband, wife or close relative had died. From January 2020 to January 2021, Victoria Crosby of Atlantic City, New Jersey, called recently bereaved elderly people from a burner phone, posing as someone from a retirement benefit office or life insurance company. She told them their late spouse's policy was "in arrears", and they had to pay before their benefit could be released. Payment was by prepaid card codes read over the phone. At least 17 victims paid her more than $100,000. She pleaded guilty to wire fraud in November 2023. Status: Pleaded guilty.
| Step | What Crosby did |
|---|---|
| Pick | Called elderly people whose spouse or relative had just died |
| Pose | Used fake names and a prepaid phone, claiming to work for a retirement benefit office or life insurer |
| Hook | Said the policy or pension naming them as beneficiary was "in arrears" and had to be paid off first |
| Collect | Talked them through buying reloadable prepaid cards in shops and reading out the 10-digit codes |
| Cash out | Drained the cards into her own accounts and withdrew cash at ATMs in Atlantic City, Brigantine and Absecon |
It's a pretexting scam built on grief. Who checks paperwork carefully two weeks after a funeral?
Tip: if a call about a late relative's insurance ends in a request for gift cards, it's a scam. Hang up and call the insurer on the number from an official statement.
A 73-year-old Maryland widow got a call about two weeks after her husband, a Maryland state employee, died. She was told she owed $3,498 in arrears on his life insurance. She paid. The next day a "supervisor" called to say the figure had been wrong and more was due. She handed over about $6,496 more in Reloadit packs.
Victims were in New Jersey, Maryland and elsewhere.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 2020 to January 2021 | The scheme runs |
| 16 June 2021 | Charged by complaint. Four counts: wire fraud, concealing facts that affected her Social Security payments, health care fraud, lying to HUD |
| 16 November 2023 | Guilty plea, one wire fraud count, in Camden federal court (Judge Robert B. Kugler) |
Money in her account during 2020, per the DOJ: $110,380. And all the while, according to the complaint, she kept drawing SSI, Medicaid and HUD housing help and never mentioned it. It put the related public-housing benefit at $9,057 and Medicaid at $86,689.93. Sentencing was scheduled for March 2024. The record doesn't give the outcome.
See also vishing examples and the PNC gold conversion scam.
A caller claims a late relative's policy is waiting for you but has unpaid "arrears", and you must pay first, often by gift card, to receive it.
At least 17 victims paid her over $100,000. The DOJ said $110,380 reached her bank account in 2020.
Elderly people, many over 70, whose spouse or close family member had recently died.
She pleaded guilty to wire fraud on 16 November 2023.
Social Engineering Examples. “The New Jersey life insurance "arrears" scam that targeted new widows (2020 to 2021)”. Accessed 3 November 2026. https://socialengineeringexamples.com/nj-life-insurance-beneficiary-pretexting-widows-2025
Two documented targets were spouses of deceased Maryland state employees, and callers claimed to represent the Maryland State Retirement Agency; the supplied record does not establish how Crosby obtained their names or contact details.
Because documented targets included spouses of deceased Maryland state employees and callers invoked the Maryland State Retirement Agency, pension systems and families should treat unsolicited benefit-related calls after a death with suspicion and verify them through an independently sourced agency number.
Crosby acquired a prepaid "burner" cellphone and adopted fictitious names and a fabricated employer identity (a purported retirement benefit office or life insurance company), giving her a disposable, hard-to-trace calling identity before any contact was made.
Prepaid burner phones and fabricated caller identities are cheap and largely undetectable before a call is placed; carrier-level caller-ID authentication (e.g. STIR/SHAKEN-style call verification) only partially mitigates this, so the realistic defense sits at later verification stages rather than blocking phone acquisition itself.
Crosby cold-called each victim, introduced herself under a fictitious name, and falsely claimed to be an employee of a retirement benefit office or life insurance company contacting them about a policy or pension left by their deceased family member.
Recipients of an unsolicited call claiming to be from an insurer or benefits office should hang up and independently call back using a number from an official statement or the insurer's/agency's public website, never a number or claim supplied by the caller.
She told the victim that the policy or pension, of which they were the named beneficiary, was "in arrears" and that they had to pay the arrearage before the benefit could be released, framing the payment as unlocking money that was already rightfully theirs.
An unsolicited demand to pay money to unlock, release, or correct arrears on a purported benefit is a warning sign. Independently verify the benefit through the insurer or agency's official contact channel.
Victims were instructed to purchase reloadable prepaid cards at retail stores and read the 10-digit codes off the back of the cards to Crosby over the phone, a payment method that is functionally irreversible and hard to trace once the codes are handed over.
Reloadable prepaid or gift cards are a warning sign in this case. Consumers should not provide card codes to unsolicited callers, and retailers or financial institutions may use scam warnings when appropriate.
In at least one documented case, Crosby called back the next day posing as a "supervisor" who claimed the previous arrears figure was wrong, using the appearance of a second, more authoritative source to extract an additional, larger prepaid-card payment from the same victim.
A follow-up "supervisor" call correcting a previously quoted amount upward should be recognized as a classic double-tap escalation pattern and trigger the same independent callback verification as Stage 3, rather than being treated as more credible because it claims higher authority.
Crosby logged into the prepaid cards' online accounts with the codes she had collected, transferred the balances into accounts she controlled, and withdrew the funds in cash from ATMs in Atlantic City, Brigantine, and Absecon, New Jersey, spreading withdrawals across multiple locations.
Prepaid-card issuers and banks can flag rapid loading of newly purchased card balances into unfamiliar third-party accounts followed by cash withdrawals across multiple nearby ATM locations as an anomalous cash-out pattern warranting a hold or manual review.
Crosby retained the stolen funds (over $100,000 from at least 17 victims, $110,380 into her bank account in 2020 alone) while concealing that income from SSA, Medicaid, and HUD so she could keep collecting SSI, Medicaid, and public-housing assistance she would otherwise have been ineligible for.
Benefits agencies such as SSA, Medicaid, and HUD can run periodic income and asset cross-checks (data matching, eligibility redeterminations) against recipients to catch undisclosed income, including proceeds of an unrelated criminal scheme, that would otherwise let concealment persist indefinitely.
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Social Engineering Examples