Phone Scams Are on the Rise Especially During Holiday Season
ZANESVILLE, Ohio-Â When your phone rings you may want to think twice before answering that unfamiliar number.
There is a new scam going around where a caller will call their prey and pretend to be from a utilities or cable company or even the IRS. Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz said these calls focus on making some type of threat. These people bully the person on the phone into sending them money out of fear.
“Basically try to get somebody to go to a near by retailer such as a walmart,” Sheriff Lutz said. “To try to get them to get a money gram to send to them. And that’s not how businesses work.”
Sheriff Lutz said senior citizens are the prime targets of these crooks. Lutz also said these types of cases are hard to prosecute.
“These case are very hard to prove.” Lutz said. “We can’t always do something for our citizens and get a conviction, or get the guilty person behind bars. But when we have things like this we just try to make our citizens aware and safe as possible.”
The Ohio Attorney General’s Help Center received more than 600 reports of scams like these. Authorities say you should immediately hang up when you receive phone calls of this nature.
