Odds are a scammer has your number and either has called or will call, according to Danny Martin, Patrick County Sheriff’s investigator.
Prevention is the best defense against the calls that use high pressure and emotion to try to lure potential victims, he said.
An example Martin cited involves APCo, an American Electric Power (AEP) subsidiary.
Although “I haven’t heard of it recently, it does pop up on occasion,” Martin said. “Winter is the prime time for this scam and elderly people are the prime targets in this scam.”
In the APCo scam, potential victims receive a telephone call from someone who claims to be a representative of the company. That person “will state that the potential victim’s power bill is way overdue and their power will be cut off that day unless a sum of money is paid immediately,” Martin said.
Generally, “the scammer will request that the victim either wire the money by Western Union or obtain Green Dot cards to pay the requested amount,” Martin said. He noted it is important to remember that “APCo will not call and make an offer like this.”
Additionally, being asked to use either Western Union or Green Dot cards to make a payment should be considered a red flag, or tell-tale sign that the caller is a scammer, he said, and added neither form of payment can be traced.
Because calls from scammers are designed to evoke an emotional response, Martin said other red flags “are a sense of urgency or feeling pressured to take any kind of immediate action.”
Scams often cycle, with an identical or similar scam attempted several times a year, he said.
The most recent reported scams involve emails, Martin said. One claims to be from an international monetary fund and notifies the potential victim a sum of money is due them and will be transferred to them as soon as proper information — including name, address and driver’s license number — is provided.
“It is nothing more than an attempt to gain your personal information and steal your identity,” Martin said.
Another recent scam report claims to be from James Comey, director of the FBI, Martin said of the scam that seeks to reimburse scam victims for their losses.
“The FBI would never be a partner for reimbursements to victims,” Martin said, and added reimbursements to crime victims are handled by the courts.
Martin said the writing style in the email appears to be “foreign in origin,” but that is not surprising considering the majority of scam calls originate from an offshore location. The two most common locales are Jamaica and Nigeria, he said, and added that more than 30,000 calls a day come into the United States per day from Jamaica alone.
