Rod Ashby was desperate to find his wife Kim Ashby after their newly built home in Elk Park, North Carolina, was swept away by Hurricane Helene’s floodwaters in late September and she went missing.
His daughter, Ansley Ashby, told CNN her father needed a four-wheel drive pickup to navigate the roads along the Elk River that had been largely decimated by the storm so he could search for Kim. His Ford F-350 had been lost to the raging water and mud.
Rod, a US Navy veteran, began shopping for a new vehicle with the insurance payout he received, Ansley said.
“He was really just trying to find a truck that didn’t break the bank with everything else going on that he could get fairly quickly,” she said.
Ansley said Rod - who is not speaking with the media – came across a website that claimed to be a Colorado auto dealer selling repossessed vehicles for prices lower than market value. After having multiple phone conversations and exchanging emails with the supposed seller, Rod decided to purchase a 2020 Ford F-350 listed on the site. He received a contract and bill of sale from the seller, and wired nearly $40,000 to the seller’s bank account.
“It seemed legit, to be honest,” Ansley said.
But 36 hours after Rod sent the money and received confirmation that the car would be delivered by October 30, Ansley said she discovered the F-350 was still listed for sale on the site.
Ansley called the seller from a phone number not associated with their original account and pretended to be a new buyer interested in that same truck. The seller told her the truck was available, she said. It was then that Ansley said she realized they had been scammed.
She did further research and learned the scammer was impersonating a real car dealership in Colorado and had even made a copycat version of its website, Ansley said.
The scam has only made matters worse for a family already reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Helene and desperately looking for Kim, a 58-year-old teacher who her daughter, Jessica Meidinger, calls “the glue that holds everyone together.”
“It’s just another gut punch,” said Ansley, Kim’s stepdaughter. “You just feel so helpless.”
The red flags of a scam
Ansley said she and her father have contacted their bank and the scammer’s bank to report the fraud but have had no luck yet recovering the money they wired.
The family filed a police report with the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office in Pittsboro, North Carolina, where Rod is currently living with Ansley, Meidinger and her wife, Ansley said.
The family’s fraud case is under investigation, according to Randall Rigsbee, a spokesman for the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office.
Ansley said the scammer’s website has been taken down. CNN affiliate ABC 11 in Raleigh reported that it emailed the company but the message was returned as undeliverable, and it could not reach anyone via phone.
The owner of the legitimate Colorado car dealership told CNN he received calls from several people in recent months who fell victim to the same scam. The owner asked not to be named for fear of his business being unfairly targeted by scam victims.
“They are taking the money and people aren’t even seeing the cars (in person) or anything,” the owner said. “They are blindly transferring the money.”
Melanie McGovern, a spokesperson for the Better Business Bureau, said it’s best to work with local car dealers that allow you to come in and view the vehicle and test drive it.
McGovern advises doing thorough research on the car seller to make sure the business is legitimate. The Better Business Bureau has a tracker on its website that lists scams that have been previously reported to the organization.
Red flags for scams include websites that look poorly designed with spelling errors and sellers rushing you to make a purchase by saying they have other buyers waiting, she said. McGovern advises people to make vehicle purchases with credit cards or checks because they are more likely to have fraud protection, unlike bank wires.
“When you wire something, you are authorizing that transaction and it’s harder to get that money back,” she said. “People really need to be patient and stop and pause and say, ‘Does this sound legitimate?’”
A family left devastated
Ansley Ashby said her father is struggling to cope with his new reality: his wife and three dogs are missing, his home was destroyed in the hurricane and he doesn’t know if he will get his nearly $40,000 back.
Rod Ashby and Kim had spent the last two years building the house along the Elk River that they planned to make their retirement home.
They had visited regularly to apply the finishing touches, according to the family. The couple live in Sanford, about 45 miles southwest of Raleigh, but went to the house near the Tennessee state line to handle a few things before the storm.
The couple constructed the house 20 feet above the historic flood lines on the river. Meidinger previously told CNN its foundation was no match for Helene’s destructive tide.
On September 27, the couple was eating breakfast when Rod realized something was wrong. Within seconds, the house was swept away into the river.
Meidinger said Rod grabbed her mom and their three dogs, held onto a mattress and then a wall, as their house floated down the river. They were eventually separated in the fast-moving waters.
“That’s the last time that he saw my mom,” Meidinger previously told CNN. “The last time anyone has seen my mom.”
Avery County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Van Williams said police and volunteer search crews have spent the last six weeks combing the Elk River for Kim, without any luck. She is among two people still missing in the county after the storm, Williams said.
More than 200 people died across the southeast region of the country in the hurricane, CNN previously reported.
Ansley said her father had shared his struggles with the scammer during several phone conversations before wiring the money.
“He definitely took advantage of our situation,” she said.
CNN’s Ray Sanchez and David Williams contributed to this story.