It started with a morning phone call.

“Hi, Poppa. What’cha doing. Are you alone,” the caller asked.

To Butch Brewer, a burly retired East Boothbay lobsterman, it sounded like Hannah, his beloved granddaughter — with a cold. She is a junior at the University of Rhode Island studying pharmacy.

The caller said she was in Newport and riding to breakfast with a girlfriend. They were in her boyfriend’s car and were stopped by the police who found a couple of pounds of marijuana in the trunk.

She was in custody and needed $7,000 in cash to get out of jail.

Brewer didn’t know it at the time, but he was being scammed. It was a flimflam artist dangling the bait that no grandparent could resist. One of their grandchildren was in trouble and asking for help. Of course, they would listen to the pitch and try to help.

Authorities call it the “Grandma Scam.” It is a common technique bunco artists use to invade your bank account. But, to Brewer, it sounded real.

Another woman got on the phone calling herself Sgt. Sonja (something) and she rolled into her well-rehearsed pitch.

“She said they knew his granddaughter was innocent because they checked the drug package and didn’t find her fingerprints. But she was in custody and needed $7,000 cash to get out,” he said.

Sgt. Sonja told him that he could just go to the bank, get $7,000. They would arrange to get the cash down there and, if he acted quickly, it wouldn’t go on Hannah’s permanent criminal record.

Brewer told her he could get the money, but wondered if he could just get a money order and send it down to Rhode Island.

“Oh no,” she said. “It has to be in cash. You have to get $7,000 in $100 bills so it wouldn’t be too big a package. Then you call me back, and I will arrange for a bailiff to pick it up,” she said.

The alleged Sgt. Sonja sounded legit, and she kept talking, so Brewer made a suggestion.

“Why can’t I get our police chief to call down to their local police department and tell them he had the money,” he said.

“Oh no. Don’t do that. Don’t get another police department in on this,” she warned.

So the lobsterman asked if he could talk to his granddaughter and Sgt. Sonja said no. Hannah only gets one phone call and she already called you.

“About this time I was starting to tell myself it sounds like a bunch of bull,” he said, and offered another suggestion.

“Why don’t I just get the cash, jump in my car and I could be in Rhode Island in five hours,” he said.

No, no, no, she told him. “She is in ‘lockdown,’ and you can’t do that,” she said and hung up.

Sgt. Sonja had told him they had confiscated her cell phone, but he picked up his cell and punched in his granddaughter's cell.

“She picked up but said she couldn’t talk because she was in class,” he said.

Meanwhile, he talked to Boothbay Harbor Police Sgt. Larry Brown and he said it was a common scam. Boothbay Harbor Chief Bob Hasch said scams like this happen all the time.

Sheriff Todd Brackett, who had an elderly family member fall for a similar senior scam, agreed with Hasch. “We hear about this all the time, and it is tough to investigate,” he said.

“These scammers are out of town, and some are out of the country. They want you to give them your bank account information. They want your personal information, like Social Security numbers. They want you to give them your credit card numbers. But, once they get your credit card number, the money disappears and so do they,” said the sheriff.

If someone calls telling you to provide cash to bail out your grandchild, Brackett suggests you take a minute to verify their claims.

“If they claim they are calling from a police agency, get the name of the department. The caller will be glad to give you their phone number but don’t call it. Instead, look up the phone number of the police department and call them directly. If they say your grandchild is in jail, find out the name of the jail and call them directly. But, be sure not to call the phone number provided by the caller,” he warned for it will just go back to the scammer.

Butch Brewer figured out it was a scam and was not surprised when an hour later, another woman called asking if he had the $7,000 in cash.

“I told her to tell my granddaughter she could stay in jail, and she hung up,” he said.