Last Wednesday was a hectic day for Margie Dennie. The 85-year-old had a cold and didn’t feel 100 percent, and she was rushing around the house trying to get everything ready for Thanksgiving.

Then the phone rang. The caller claimed to be her grandson Tony.

Today, Dennie probably wishes she had never answered the phone. She’s $3,020 poorer, but she wanted to tell her story so that no one else will fall for the same scam she did.

Dennie listened to the man claiming to be her grandson. It didn’t sound like Tony, she told the caller. He responded by saying that he had a broken nose and probably didn’t sound normal.

He’d run a stop sign in Albion, the caller said, and hit a car full of people who were visiting from out of the country. Now he was in jail in Albion (where the real Tony lives) but if she would wire $3,000 to the people he’d hit they’d drop the charges and he could go home.

Then “Tony” said he’d have his lawyer give Dennie a call.

Someone claiming to be Tony’s lawyer called all right. He told Dennie she had to wire cash, not use a credit card. And he called and called and called – five times – wanting to know whether she’d wired the money yet. They were trying to get Tony out of jail in time for Thanksgiving, he said.

Dennie had tried to call her grandson at home, but there was no answer, so she finally caved in, went to the bank and withdrew $3,000, where no one asked any questions, she said.

Then she went to Kmart on South Anthony Boulevard, where she wired $2,790 by Western Union to the Dominican Republic, paying a $230 fee to do it.

Again, no one asked any questions.

The next day, Tony showed up for Thanksgiving. That’s when it became clear that Dennie had been scammed.

There’s no telling how many people have lost money in similar scams. Many of those who get taken don’t tell anyone because they are embarrassed, but from the number of tales I’ve heard locally, it’s big business and a lot of people, mostly elderly, fall for it.

Dennie said her daughter even told her that someone she works with fell for a similar scam.

How the scammers made the connection between Dennie and her grandson is unknown. Perhaps it came from an obituary, or someone’s Facebook page, but many scammers know the names of the people they’re dealing with.

But there were some giveaways in the scam that fleeced Dennie.

Dennie was told to wire cash and not use a credit card. A big red flag should go up whenever anyone asks you to wire money, especially to a foreign country. Another should go up if someone specifies that you must use cash or tells you not to tell anyone why you’re wiring someone money.

Finally, if you’re in jail, you can’t get released by paying off your supposed victim. It might work like that in some countries, but not here.

Dennie said she didn’t have the money to lose. She has little income and has enough to pay her utilities and a mortgage her late husband took out on her home.

Dennie filed a police report with the Allen County Sheriff’s Department, but there’s little they can do. The phone numbers the scammers called from aren’t traceable. They money she wired is gone.

But maybe others can learn from her misfortune, she says.