Police report phone scam

Police are warning people where scammers are making phone calls to obtain personal account information through a phone.
Detective Steve Mahan reported: three things were happened on dec 19th, in which a man told residents he was from a repossession company & he want account numbers to clear up bogus charges. He additionally reported: Don't speak with him, just hang up and call police right away.
Residents said the number was blocked on caller ID and the caller identified himself as Troy to at least one resident. Mahan urges anyone who receives a call, or anything believed to be fraudulent in nature, to contact the department. Steve Mahan reported: We're trying to warn people so they don't offer up money.

Phone Scam Steals Millions from Elder American

A very big phone scam exploits the good name of the Make a Wish Foundation and it has siphoned over $20 million from unwary Americans and has been rising in recent months. Some of the authorities said it is speedy becoming one of the ugliest telemarketing schemes mainly to target the aged in years.

Many scammers pretending to be calling from government agencies as the Internal Revenue Service and the FDC (Federal Trade Commission) have put a new twist on an old defraud.

They were thrashing offshore, thousands of miles away, but they're using internet phone technology to masquerade their location.

Victims see a 202 area code on their phones when the calls come in. They dial apparently authentic U.S. phone numbers to call the scammers back. Unlike the standard telemarketing frauds, these weren't people hiding behind a phone number you couldn't call, a voice you couldn't re-erect.

These were people who left telephone numbers and would talk to you," said Paul Allvin, a vice president of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, who became alarmed when he started hearing from multiple victims a week about the fraudulent calls. Paul Allvin, a vice president of the Make-A-Wish Foundation said these were people who left telephone numbers and would talk to you.

One team of con artists spoke with Patricia Bowles, the owner of a Virginia modeling studio, almost every day for more than a month. Eventually, they had persuaded her to send more than $300,000 through Western Union and Moneygram in what she thought were luxury taxes and insurance fees on the $1.1 million prize they promised would be arriving any day.

Source: phone scam

Maid spray for $20thousand fortunate draw scam

Miss Sopiyanah, an Indonesian maid thought she had won$20,000. But she, ended up losing $74 in a mobile phone scam instead. It may be a small amount for most but it is about 20 per cent of her monthly salary. She could have lost another $400 if her employer Jenny Ong, 84, a retiree, did not step in to help her.

Miss Sopiyanah, said in Bahasa Indonesia: "I never thought it was a scam. I thought only of the money and how I could use it to build a new house for my parents in Indonesia."

Scam came in the form of an inoffensive message claiming to be from Petronas, stating that the beneficiary had won $20,000. Then recipients were told to transfer money to a bank account to process the transfer of the cash prize.

Miss Sopiyanah explained about scam that she received a text message on Sept 30 from an Indonesian mobile phone number that she had won $20,000 from PETRONAS. This is not the first time fraudsters have used the name of the Malaysian oil company to swindle people. In 2008, some Singaporeans received similar SMSes reporting that they had won $5,000 from PETRONAS in a lucky draw.

Miss Sopiyanah right away called the number using her Singapore pre paid SIM card and a man who identified himself as "Bapak Suleiman".

Scammers enact grandchildren

ONEIDA City Police are alerting area residents to a phone scam which has already been played on one Oneida man.

In this case, the victim an elderly male receives a phone call from someone stating they are a grandchild of the victim and they have been under arrest in another country and need bail money agitated to them. After that money is sent by wire to an out of the country location and the victim later learns that their grandchild was not in that country.

Federal authorities are contacted as the money is picked up outside the country where tracking down the pickup of the money is difficult due to the delay in reporting and the locations used by the suspects. Police says: They will aim elderly victims as they may have grandchildren who do not live nearby or they are not capable to quickly confirm that it is not the grandchild. A previous incident of this kind of scam, with a deviation, happened few years ago in which the victim was advised that a grandchild had been concerned in an accident in Canada, seized and needed money related to the accident. But in that case no money had been sent. The location of where the money was to be sent was tracked back to a hotel in Toronto and the information was turned over to Canadian authorities.

If anyone receiving a call of these types were asked to contact police.

Now Scammers have targeting door-to-door recently with the "Blacktop Scam”. By means of internet access, it’s easy to read about these scams and know how to avoid them. It is important for the police and potential victims to make scam baiting and to get the word out to newspapers and family. So everyone will be aware of these scams.