“I don’t think I ever thought it was a scam until I saw the guy running out the front door and it wasn’t until I went upstairs and saw my stuff gone. That’s when I realized I’d been had,” Loli McIlwain says.
A homeowner is speaking out after falling victim to a new crime wave of phony tree trimmers.
Loli McIlwain, 79, says a man knocked on her door and claimed that he needed to inspect some trees in her backyard that could cause problems with wires.
“There’s a limb that’s getting ready to fall on a wire in the alley, so he said, ‘Can you walk me back there to the alley,” McIlwain tells Inside Edition.
As the 79-year-old took the man into her backyard, his accomplice exited a vehicle and went into the home. Surveillance footage shows him going up the stairs where McIlwain says he ransacked her bedroom.
“I don’t think I ever thought it was a scam until I saw the guy running out the front door and it wasn’t until I went upstairs and saw my stuff gone. That’s when I realized I’d been had,” McIlwain says. “He did get my diamond watch.”
A similar scam happened two miles away to former investigative TV reporter Keli Rabon.
Her nanny responded to a knock on her door.
“The guy said he was there to trim trees on behalf of a neighbor,” Rabon tells Inside Edition.
She let the man inside and led him to the backyard, where he distracted Rabon and her nanny.
“Meanwhile, his counterpart, who I never saw until after the fact, was making his way into my room and stealing my entire safe,” Rabon says. Her shelves were left empty.
Rabon says surveillance shows the alleged thief leaving with the safe wrapped in a blanket.
“All in all it was over $100,000 in cash, and fine jewelry and mementoes from my grandmother,” Rabon says.
The former reporter shared her story on social media.
“Don’t let anybody in your home. You can not trust anybody anymore these days,” Rabon said in a video. “I’m so grateful that the boys are okay, that I’m okay, that the nanny is okay.”
McIlwain shared the same sentiment.
“Nobody was hurt. They could have hurt me,” McIlwain says.
Authorities believe the tree-trimming scammers are an organized group that travels the country leaving a trail of robberies in their wake.
Last month, a Colorado man was sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in a tree-trimming scam.
