Somebody calls my mother-in-law and says, "Grandmom, I was in a wreck." Because my son is her only grandchild old enough to drive, she assumes it's him.

The scammer then goes on to claim he broke his nose in an auto accident and begs my MIL not to tell my wife and me. He also says the cops are on the scene and he has a lawyer. My MIL tells "my son" he should call me since I'm a lawyer.

They hang up and my MIL calls my wife and tells her what happened. My wife immediately calls my son who isn't answering his phone. Then she calls me and all sorts of nightmare scenarios are running through our head. It wasn't until a couple of hours later that our son calls back to say he's fine. He had a presentation at work so he turned off his cell phone.

If my MIL didn't challenge the scammer on why he didn't just call me instead, I believe Part II of the scam would have been another person call my MIL, claim to be the lawyer, and say he needs 5 or 10 grand to represent my son.

We looked it up and found out this is a pretty common scam. They prey on older people hoping they're more gullible.