You are a winner! You have been selected to win $100,000, but first…I need your social security number and bank information.
Stop! This is just one example of the many scams going on in the community.
JC Post was recently informed of a telephone scam where a caller contacted an alleged potential victim and said they were from Reader’s Digest and wanted to reward $10,000 to the person they called. In order to gain trust with the potential scam victim, the caller offered to three way call the person’s bank. Still not feeling confident about the exchange when the “bank” came on the phone line, the person asked the scammer the name of their account manager and the callers abruptly ended the call.
Junction City Police Chief Dan Breci said that everyday a new scam circulates, via telephone, email or courier mail.
“There are literally hundreds of thousands of different scams going on every minute of the day throughout the world,” said Breci. “If they think that they are going to get something for free, it’s probably a scam – hang up the phone, and click out of or close the browser on their internet or their phone; if you give up any information or if you click on the wrong email attachment on your computer, you could be in for a rough ride.”
The difficulty with the scams, if you are a victim is arresting and prosecuting the assailants.
“The sad fact is that a lot of these scams come out of foreign countries and they’re very sophisticated on how the computer networks work and how banking works; trying to track down an IP address is almost impossible because even if we do [track them down], they’re usually in some foreign country and [the government officials in those countries] are not going to go against them,” said Breci.
And despite all their sophistication and cunning tactics, many of these scammers unknowingly contact law enforcement individuals.
“I can’t tell you how many times a week that somebody calls me or I get emails, and they’re saying that I won something or saying that I can get something for free if I do such and such; I just hang up [the phone] or click off of it on my computer, because I know [it’s a scam] – I don’t know anybody that gets anything for free,” said Breci.
The general rule of thumb in prize winning phone calls or emails is if they sound too good to be true, they usually are.
“Everyone should be aware of anything that they’re doing online, anything that comes as an email attachment that they’re not aware of they should not open it; anybody contacting them by phone saying that they won something – it’s probably, almost 99% sure a scam,” said Breci.
The Federal Trade Commission Consumer Information has a list of tips for navigating safely in the age of internet and telephone scams.
- Spot imposters
- Do online searches
- Don’t believe your Caller ID
- Don’t pay upfront for a promise
- Consider how you pay
- Talk to someone
- Hang up on robocalls
- Be skeptical about free trial offers
- Don’t deposit a check and wire money back
- Sign up for free scam alerts from the FTC at https://www.ftc.gov/scams
*feature image courtesy clipart panda