Scam Alerts

Phone scam where a caller claims to be a grandchild who needs money urgently to get out of jail or travel home. The caller often gets the victim to provide a grandchild’s name, when the victim says something like, “Steven is that you?”, and the caller replies “yes it’s me Steven”. The caller will instruct the victim to withdraw cash from their bank and wire it to them or buy pre- loaded gift cards or iTunes cards and provide the code numbers from the cards to the caller.

Caller claims to be from the IRS and they have found an error in your taxes! Caller says that if you don’t send payment immediately an arrest warrant will be issued, sometimes they claim the police are on the way. Caller will typically convince the victim to obtain a pre-loaded payment card, iTunes card, etc. then have the victim provide the code from the card over the phone. In similar versions the caller will claim to be the police calling about an outstanding warrant or the Court Clerk claiming you failed to appear for jury duty and must pay immediately or be arrested.

A “contractor” comes to your door and tells you that you need driveway or roof repair. They will often mention your neighbor’s name as a reference, and usually want to be paid in advance. If they do any work at all, they will likely use poor quality materials and do substandard work.

The scammer will send an email or connect through a dating site, attempting to establish a romantic relationship leading to requests to have money sent. Similar versions may involve the scammer posing as a soldier in need of money or foreign official who has a fortune to share if the victim will pay some processing fees or provide bank account info.

The caller claims to be from Microsoft or “Windows” and claim that they have learned that the victim’s computer has been infected with a virus that will cause the computer become unusable. The ultimate goal of the fraud varies depending upon which con artists are running it. For example, they may try to sell phony anti-virus protection or trick the victim into providing bank or credit card information. Yet others convince the victim to allow remote access to their computer.