CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Like any bride-to-be, Brooke Carlson was looking forward to shopping for her perfect wedding dress, but her plans might have to be put on hold.
Because as of now, her savings are gone, stolen by an unsuspecting young man who she said gave the performance of a lifetime.
“Seemed innocent enough, said he needed to call his mom,” she recalled.
Carlson was eating at a bakery on Central and Kilbourne in Charlotte’s Eastway neighborhood when a young man in distress asked to use her phone.
“Left his wallet on the table and said he’ll be right back,” she said.
And five minutes later, he returned her phone and thanked her for her help.
“When he left I said, ‘What a nice young man,'" Carlson remembered.
But an hour later, when Carlson logged into her Venmo app to repay a friend, the $1,430 she saved was gone.
The guy pretending to need help had stolen every single dollar she’d saved to buy a dress for her June wedding, transferring the money to an untraceable debit card and then deleting the card from her account.
Carlson was devastated.
“I really want to help people if I’m able to,” she said.
She asked for help to recoup the $1500 that was taken. As of March 8, the GoFundMe campaign raised nearly $2,400.
CMPD warned people to never let strangers use their phone.
“I didn’t think anything of it until I realized I was out a lot of money,” Brooke explained.
There are ways you can protect your information:
- Change your settings to require passwords for Venmo and the Cash App
- Hide those apps from your homepage
- Never hand over your phone