A call that nearly emptied a widow’s savingsA 79-year-old Ottawa County widow got a call that would have made even a busy bureaucrat blush. The voice on the line said her Social Security number was tied to terrorism, drug activity, and money laundering, then told her to move nearly $700,000 into gold coins so law enforcement could track the supposed criminals. She drove about 40 miles to Grand Rapids Coins on 10 Mile Road NE near Rockford and wired the money for 145 one-ounce American Eagle gold coins. That is a lot of panic for one phone call, and a reminder that scams work best when they dress up nonsense in official language and keep the victim too rattled to think straight.Ben Soldaat sees what the scammers missedOwner Ben Soldaat noticed the classic warning signs right away: urgency, confusion, repeated questions, and almost no interest in the actual coins. In other words, the kind of customer service review no business wants. He called the Kent County Sheriff’s Office, and detectives quickly confirmed it was a sophisticated gold scam. They set up a sting, and an undercover deputy dressed as an elderly woman met the courier at a nearby doughnut shop…

A hearing with a lot of silence ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace Jones came before the House Administration Committee this week and gave lawmakers almost nothing back. Across the hearing, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right 22 times and did not answer a single question, which is one way to turn a hearing on transparency into a master class in avoidance. Chairman Bryan Steil led the questioning and focused on a 2023 letter Wallace Jones had sent to Congress about ActBlue’s donation checks. Republicans said her silence only raised more questions about what the fundraising giant knew, when it knew it, and why the answers seem to have gone missing. Questions about foreign money and fake names Steil and other Republicans pressed Wallace Jones on allegations that ActBlue accepted donations tied to foreign sources and contributions that did not match real people. Lawmakers pointed to donor records that reportedly used so-called smurfs, meaning names used without the owner’s knowledge. They also asked whether ActBlue weakened fraud screening after internal warnings said looser rules would invite more bad donations. Wallace Jones would not say if she stood by her prior sworn statements, whether she approved the changes, or how much money may…