It’s likely at some point nearly everyone with a phone has received a call from somebody attempting to do something they’ve been trying to do for centuries — separate them from their money.
Often accompanied by odd area codes or perhaps someone speaking in broken English, scams perpetuated over phone lines and the Internet happen every day.
“No one is safe from them,” Meredith Aldridge of the Consumer Protection Division of the Mississippi Attorney General’s office said at Tuesday’s McComb Lions Club meeting.
Aldridge’s department investigates and enforces state laws concerning cybercrime, public corruption and consumer protection.
She discussed the division’s efforts to educate the public on identity theft and scams.
Aldridge brought up a common scam, one that the Enterprise-Journal has reported on in the past, that uses the IRS as cover.
“Even though tax season is over, we still hear about this scam frequently,” she said.
The caller claims to be an IRS representative and says the person they are calling owes back taxes, or a judgment from the agency. Often, the caller will be pushy, demanding and threatening. In some cases, they will make up to five phone calls in one day, often using intimidation to scam money out of victims.
Aldridge makes clear that if the IRS or other governmental agency is trying to contact you, they will usually do so by mail. If you do owe the agency money or believe you might, she said it’s best to call a representative yourself.
Another familiar scam is the Walmart Green Dot card scam. In this one, the caller says the victim has been awarded a prepaid Green Dot card from Walmart for hundreds of dollars. Like a winning lottery notice through email, the scammer suggests the victim has won money, but they have to send money to the scammer first.
“They’ll ask for a small amount of money from a check or credit card. They’ll call it an international tax or something like that. Well, that gives them your information,” Aldridge said.
Amite County Sheriff Tim Wroten alerted the Enterprise-Journal just months ago about a home repair scam in which two men asked for money up front before they would perform any work. After receiving the money, the two never showed back up — in one case taking more than $5,000 from an Amite County resident.
In some cases, victims have gotten personal information and then attempted to cash in on unemployment benefits.
Often, the victim will find out about it when the Department of Employment Security sends them a letter in the mail. By that time, sometimes, it’s too late.
Still other scams originate from Nigeria or Nova Scotia. Cases like these are nearly impossible to prosecute since they take place overseas, District Attorney and Lions Club member Dee Bates said. Aldridge says those cases fall into the federal government’s hands. And with so many of them — and the difficulty in tracking down those behind them — they can be a daunting challenge to stop.
An additional difficulty for law enforcement is that many scammers use a practice of “spoofing” which mimics or invents a phone number besides the number the person is calling from. This trick is a common practice for the IRS scammers, whose number traces back to where one would expect the IRS to call from — Washington, D.C.
Aldridge also advises people to be wary of work-at-home job scams that are often posted online.
“We’ve all heard of these scams. They say you can make $1,000 a week. Of course, if they were legitimate, we would all be rich,” Aldridge said.
The best offense against the effectiveness of the scams is education, she said.
“Our main mission is to educate people. Some of these people put a lot of time and effort into these scams. We often say that if they spent as much time on a legitimate occupation, these scammers could be successful business people,” she said.
Steps to minimize your identity being stolen include checking billing cycles and credit history.
Aldridge advises people not to click on questionable email links, and to update computers with the latest security software.
Pike County chief sheriff’s investigator Lance Falvey agrees and said that diligence should be applied to any major purchase — especially over the Internet.
“Do some research, ask them. If it’s a reputable business, they’ll understand any questions and concern,” he said.
Falvey doesn’t just protect against scams. He has also been the target of them — even on his office phone at the sheriff’s department.
“I got a phone call from Jamaica in my office. The guy was struggling to speak English. When I told him who I was, his English got much better and he let me have it,” Falvey said, describing a litany of profanities that began to come from the caller.
Falvey said he just dealt with a case where the victim purchased a vehicle on what he thought was eBay. It wasn’t and the victim ended up losing $2,000.
“He saw a deal too good to be true and avoided all safeguards. You have to look very closely at the website you are using. They’ll try to make it look like a legitimate site, but with a slight difference. Always doublecheck. Call and verify everything,” he said.
Falvey said he encourages people to do homework before making a large purchase and only go to reputable sites.
He suggests using Paypal.
“It only takes a few minutes to properly vet something. It’s true these scams are getting more unique and sophisticated all the time. That’s the goal. To swindle you out of your money,” he said.
But the biggest tip is one law enforcement officials say over and over again.
“If it’s too good to be true, don’t do it,” Falvey said.
