ALABASTER – The Alabaster Police Department is warning residents about a scam targeting senior citizens in the local area.

According to a post on the APD Facebook page, a resident recently reported being contacted by a caller claiming to be the resident’s teenage grandson. The caller claimed that he had been arrested at school, and asked for a large sum of money to bail him out of jail.

The resident hung up the phone and called another relative to check the validity of the caller’s story. He discovered that the caller was not his grandson, but an unidentified scammer who was posing as him. Police noted that the caller had used the correct name of the resident’s grandson.

“Fortunately, the resident did not give up any of his financial information or send any money,” the post read.

According to a bulletin on the American Association of Retired Persons, this scam is known as the “grandparent scam,” and senior citizens from across the United States have received similar phone calls.

“This scam usually targets the elderly and uses a similar scenario to attempt to gain money from the victim,” the APD post read.

For more information about how to handle this and other scams, visit Aarp.org.