Phone Scams are causing problems
There are many different kinds of phone scams across the region and across the world. Scammers call you pretending to be someone you know or claim that you won something. Sometimes, they even threaten to turn off your power. They try anything to get you to send money to them for nothing.
Usually when the phone rings, people answer it as soon as they can reach it. And they believe the person on the other end of the line is who they say they are. But that’s not always the case. Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz explains what scammers are going after.
“They’ll do anything, they’ll try anything to get you to send money,” Sheriff Lutz said. “That’s the focus of it is trying to get something for nothing.”
Many scams like this are going around. Whether its family needing help, winning a prize you never entered to win or the electric company threatening to turn off your service, no matter what it is, it’s all fraud.
One business owner would only speak to us by phone about how people claiming to be AEP employees scammed him out of nearly $500.
He said, “It was real confusing because I had never been late on any payments for anything.”
He felt pressure and didn’t know what to do. “They wanted me to get it done real quick. Obviously because they said they had a technician enroute to come shut the electric off.”
Police warn that when you get a suspicious call you should buy yourself time by making up a story, hanging up and calling the company to verify the caller’s story.
It’s even a scam that’s carried out from locations around the world.
“A lot of times, were getting numbers that when we check on the numbers they’re coming back either out of state, or possibly even out of our country,” Sheriff Lutz said.
So if you get one of these calls, Sheriff Lutz says there’s not really much the police can do besides file a report. That is unless the people give a local number or address. He encourages people to use commonsense and not give out money when you don’t know who’s on the other side of the phone.
Sheriff Lutz added that seem to target the older population as they feel they can trick and get them confused easier.
