Photo by Jon Anderson
Greg Watson, the manager of The UPS Store in Vestavia Hills, routinely helps prevent people from becoming victims of fraudulent scams, police said.
When Greg Watson calls the Vestavia Hills Police Department, police pay close attention and jump into action, police Chief Shane Ware told the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.
Watson, the manager of The UPS Store in Vestavia Hills, over the years has played a key role in preventing numerous people from becoming victims to fraudulent scams, Ware said during a speech to chamber members in a luncheon at the Old Overton Country Club in Liberty Park.
He honored Watson as an “Everyday Hero” for the department.
In December of last year, Watson prevented a woman in her 70s from an assisted living center from shipping a $39,000 cashier’s check to a scammer.
The woman had been contacted by someone claiming to be with Publisher’s Clearing House, saying her late husband had won a new car and all she had to do to receive the car was pay the taxes on it, Watson said.
“We knew immediately that was wrong,” Watson said.
She already had sent some money through the U.S. Postal Service, as well as her driver’s license number, Social Security number and bank account numbers, and he and a police officer had to talk her out of sending the additional $39,000 cashier’s check, he said.
“That was a fight within itself,” Watson said. “She wanted that car. She really did. Me and the officer were begging her, “Please don’t.”
She finally agreed not to send the check after they Googled the address to which she was sending the check and saw on a street-level view that it was a vacant house, he said.
Watson, who has worked at the Vestavia Hills UPS store for 21 years, has protected numerous people like this over the years, Ware said. He also in December 2024 intercepted two credit card skimmers after a package that was being shipped out of state was returned in damaged condition.
“We have learned that if Greg calls us with information, we have to stop what we’re doing and make a Facebook post,” Ware said. “We have to do that to eliminate other victims.”
Scammers frequently target a lot of people in the same area before moving on to other communities, he said.
Watson said he has learned to spot certain signs that someone may be being scammed. The customer usually is directed to bring it to the shipping location at the end of the day and send it “next day air” so that the check or cash is in transit for a short period of time, he said. The customer sometimes is nervous or upset, and 90% of the time, it is an elderly customer, he said.
Frequently, they ask customers to send cash or a cashier’s check, and sometimes they even ask the person to send the cash spread out inside of a book, he said.
It’s also not uncommon for the victim to still be on the phone with the scammer because the scammer tries to keep them on the phone so they are unable to call anyone else, he said. “They really bully them. They’re trying to scare them.”
A common scam is someone claiming to be a law enforcement officer or with a court office, saying the victim failed to pay a speeding ticket and needs to send a cashier’s check to avoid having a warrant put out for their arrest, he said. Another common scam is someone claiming to be a family member who needs bail money to get out of jail.
“They’re just coming up with something new all the time,” Watson said.
Ware said fraudulent scams are becoming a huge problem all throughout the United States.
Just last week, the FBI issued a statement that its Internet Crime Complaint Center in 2025 received over 1 million complaints, with reported losses totaling $21 billion, marking a significant increase from 2024.
Investment fraud remained the costliest scam, with cryptocurrency-related scams accounting for over half of all reported losses — roughly $11.36 billion. The FBI received more than 22,000 complaints involving artificial intelligence, with losses exceeding $893 million. And complaints about scammers posing as government officials doubled, resulting in nearly $800 million in losses.
Americans over the age of 60 were heavily targeted, reporting about $7.7 billion in losses, a 37% increase from the previous year.
These scams come in all kinds of forms, including through the internet, social media, telephone calls and texts, Ware said.
Vestavia Hills is prime city to target because of its affluence, and every age group is targeted, he said.
An age-old adage still applies, Ware said. “If it sounds too good to be true, it is,” he said.
He advises people to be particularly wary if someone contacts them claiming to be from a bank, the government or a law enforcement agency, and to never give out private information if they are the one who reached out to you. People also should look out for suspicious links, web addresses, strange spellings or improper wording in emails.
People who do business through things like Facebook Marketplace should only agree to meet people for sales in the e-commerce area in front of the Vestavia Hills Police Department, which is monitored by security cameras, he said.
People should educate themselves, their children and their parents about current scams, Ware said.
Ware also on Tuesday presented Vestavia Hills’ 2025 crime statistics and crime trends, many of which are detailed in this Vestavia Voice story.
