An Oceanside senior Marine veteran was scammed out nearly $35,000 dollars through an elaborate phone call.

“He was my first hero, really, he doesn’t like that term actually but as a man, you know, he set a good example of what it means to be an empathetic and caring person,” Amanda Eberhardt said.

For Amanda Eberhardt, seeing the man she admires most become a victim of a scheme has been devastating.

“I came back from Vietnam with PTSD, and this has just brought it back on all over again,” Tom Eberhardt said.

It happened on Oct. 27, the day of her father’s 76th birthday.

Tom Eberhardt said he received a call from a woman claiming to be an Apple representative telling him his account had been compromised in connection to racketeering and money laundering activities.

“I said well, I don’t do any of that so I don’t worry about that, but she wanted to tell me how bad it was and wanted to go in more detail,” Eberhardt said.

He claims the fake representative then asked Eberhardt to download an app on his phone called Cursor. When he opened it, he saw a list of charges the woman claimed were going on his account.

“She said, I think you better call Chase Bank and see what’s going on because there’s charges going against your card and everything,” Eberhardt said.

The woman gave Eberhardt a false Chase Bank phone number.

When Eberhardt called, a man claiming to be a Chase Bank representative answered telling him he had three charges against his account.

“He said the only thing I think you could do is you take the money out, and redeposit it and it will be like a charge to knock out that $24,700 that are prequalified on your account,” Eberhardt said.

Eberhardt then went to a Chase Bank to withdraw the money. The scammers asked him not to tell anyone.

Eberhardt was directed to a Wendy’s fast food restaurant where he met with the scammer courier and dropped off $24,000 in cash.

“He was a young guy. I would say about 5’5”. He had sunglasses and a baseball cap and covered his face a little. He said, ‘Tom.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘You know what the passcode is.’ I said, ‘Yeah’. I said, ‘Do you know what the passcode is?’ He said, ‘Yeah that’s right.’ I handed him the box of money and stuff like that and he said thanks and left,” Eberhardt said.

Eberhardt thought the money would be deposited into a new account.

But the next day, he received a call demanding another $10,000 dollars.

This time he told Eberhardt there was no courier available to pick up the money, so he asked him to mail it to a New York address.

Eberhardt did as he was told.

“Took pictures of all the money on both transactions and everything,” he said.  

After mailing the $10,000, Eberhardt realized he had been a victim of a scam.

“It’s what I saved for a long time in retirement. It’s something that people my age want to look forward to and don’t want to depend on other people for. What they’ve done has taken away my dignity and my way of life, trusting people I don’t know,” Eberhardt said.

Eberhardt said he had signed up at the Oceanside Senior Center to take a class on scams, but he never had the opportunity to complete the course.

He filed a report with Oceanside Police Department and base authorities who are investigating. Authorities said you should never provide personal or bank information to unsolicited callers.

The family started a fundraising page to help him recover the money.