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ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - St. Charles County Police are warning residents that they're seeing a 20% increase in people, especially seniors, being scammed this year.

They say the schemes run the gamut, from fake Amazon orders, to romance scams, to banking scams. But there's one common theme: the scammers create an urgent problem to get victims to give them money.

 I was very scared in the next two weeks or so that they were going to be coming to my door anyway,  said Sophia Bax.

82-year-old Sophia Bax says she responded to a text about an Amazon order that she didn't place. When she reported that it wasn't her order, she says a man came on the line, saying he was with the federal government. He said she needed to take money out of her account in order to protect it.

 He kept threatening me on the other line, don't hang up, don't hang up. I finally did when he said I needed to give him $30,000,  she said.

Sophia didn't fall for the scam and hung up. But St. Charles County Police say more people, especially older adults, are falling prey to a variety of scams.

 It's going up considerably. It's going up so far this year, probably about 20%,  said Jeff Ochs, Detective and Sergeant with St. Charles County Police.

 Not too long ago, we had a man give over $800,000 to some scammers and it was an overseas romance scheme,  Ochs said.

After Sophia's close call, New Perspective Senior Living invited police to educate their residents.

 On where technology is now with scams, what they're seeing in terms of scams in the area, and how they can protect themselves,  said Erin RightMyer, New Perspective Senior Living Executive Director.

On July 15th, Lake St. Louis Police say they received a call from an employee at a Huck's gas station that a 78-year-old woman was putting large amounts of cash into a crypto ATM.

 The employees over there did a good job, they notified us, concerned she was being scammed,  said Chief Christopher DiGiuseppi of the Lake St. Louis Police.

That is, until the responding officer got on the phone with the scam

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