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9-year-old girl foils delivery scam in her neighborhood

Posted at 3:26 PM, Jan 22, 2018
and last updated 2018-01-22 15:27:12-05

Nine-year-old Sydney Monello said her gut told her something suspicious was going on right outside her bedroom window.

She had a snow day Wednesday and was home with her brothers when she spotted an unfamiliar car with three men sitting in it in her driveway in Wayne.

“I called my dad. I’m like, ‘I see a car outside the window,’” Sydney told CBS2’s Meg Baker. “I didn’t want to call the police. … I didn’t want a false alarm.”

Her parents work a mile away.

“She said, ‘Daddy, I’m scared,’” said Sydney’s mother, Claudia. “She tends to be a little dramatic sometimes. We said: ‘Sydney, don’t worry about it. It’s OK.’”

Sydney said she ran to alert her 11- and 12-year-old brothers, but they were busy playing their XBox, so she got her guard dog.

“I opened the door really quick, and I closed it and locked it and let Rocky out,” she said.

A coworker of her parents drove by the house and told the men they could not park there. They reportedly told her they were having car trouble and then moved to the next street.

“It makes no sense because if their car broke down than how come they moved there?” Sydney said.

Little did Sydney know that the trio had ordered packages to a foreclosed home on the next block, and she caught them in the act.

Wayne police would not comment on the juvenile’s involvement but said the three men arrested are part of a large dangerous ring of thieves that has struck their town twice in recent months, stealing people’s identities and credit card numbers off the dark web.

“They purchase items online, and then once they purchase the items online, they track the delivery to their own phones or to what we call burner phones, which are throwaway phones,” said police Capt. Laurence Martin. “Then they’re waiting outside of your residence or a resident to have that thing delivered.”

Sydney said she’s been taught if you see something, “then you should say something.”

A modern day Nancy Drew.