Dean Wing, 76, says the phone call was strange.

The caller said, "'Grandma, I'm hurt, I'm in jail, and I've got a bruised nose, a broken nose. Please don't tell anybody in the family because I'm embarrassed,'" Wing tells NY1.

Wing ignored the call, but then she got two more like it. During the third call, Wing says the caller claimed her son was in legal trouble and needed $9,000 and that someone would stop by her apartment in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan to pick it up.

Wing called her son, who was okay, and he called police and rushed over to meet her. She says the scammer arrived, but ran away before he could be caught.

Police say Wing is one of at least 27 elderly New Yorkers targeted in recent weeks in what the NYPD calls the "grandparent scam." Several people have been victimized, surrendering tens of thouands of dollars. The NYPD has made a video to warn older New Yorkers about it. 

"A lot of the time it involves a car accident, in several cases that they hit a pregnant woman, possibly killed an unborn child, that they might have been drinking and needed bail money," says Deputy Inspector Jessica Corey of the NYPD Crime Prevention Division.

Police say one of the best pieces of evidence is a surveillance video showing a man arriving at the home of a 93-year-old woman on Trinity Avenue in the Morrisania section of the Bronx to pick up $8,500 in cash.

NY1 has learned that at W. 66th St. and Central Park West, a 93-year-old man gave up a total of $20,000 over three separate occasions in a scammer.

"It's cruel, you work so hard for any money that you're able to save and they're trying to just scam you out of it," said Wing.

Officials say if you get a call asking for money you should immediately hang up.

Anyone with information about the grandparent scam is asked to call the crimes stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-8477.