Scam Alerts

MILLARD COUNTY RESIDENTS RECEIVING SCAM PHONE CALLS - FEBRUARY 14, 2011

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 23:05:45 +0000

Some of our Millard County residents have been receiving phone calls from people who are claiming to be either bail bondsmen or a representative of a resident’s grandchild. The caller will know the name of the child. During the call the suspect tells the resident the grandchild has been arrested and they need bail money sent to them. The caller begs the resident to tell no one of their arrest. They will tell you the child is afraid of getting into trouble if the parents find out. The resident is then instructed to send the bail money to them using Western Union. The most recent callers have claimed to be in jail in the Houston, Texas area. Although, the suspects’ current tactic is claiming to be in jail, there have been other scams in the country where the suspects claim to be stranded in foreign countries or to have lost all their possessions while on vacation.

Sheriff Dekker encourages all resident to be very mindful and cautious of sending any money via money wire services for any reason. If you need to send money, verify the person you are sending the money to is the person they are claiming to be. Please share this information with the elderly in our communities as they are the ones who are being targeted at this time.

NEW EMAIL SCAM - JULY 9, 2010

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 04:09:49 +0000

The Millard County Sheriff’s Office has been made aware of yet another scam to get the money of unsuspecting residents. There is an email circulating that states the resident has won some money but a relative has claimed the money in Malaysia and the company has now contacted the FBI to see if in fact the subject who picked up the money is a relative. The email comes through and looks very official and even has a copy of a passport on it. The email asks the recipient to look at the passport and identify the person as a relative and if they are unable to do that it asks for some personal information to be emailed to them. See the attached for further information about the email. Sheriff Robert Dekker urges anyone who receives a message like this to contact the Millard County Sheriff’s Office and advises them to not give out any personal information.

PUBLISHERS CLEARING HOUSE SCAM - OCTOBER 8, 2009

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:22:16 +0000

In recent weeks the Millard County Sheriff’s Office has received several complaints from citizens stating they have been contacted by someone posing to be from Publishers Clearing House. The callers posing to be from Publishers Clearing House been advising Millard County residents that they have won a large sum of money. They then ask the residents to wire them a percentage of the winnings through Western Union. They assure the residents that they will then bring them their winnings in a Publishers Clearing House van. .

Many of our residents are receiving this type of call and Sheriff Dekker reminds you to NEVER give out personal information over the phone to anyone and use extra caution if wiring money to individuals you don’t know. If you have questions please call us at 435-743-5302 or 435-864-2755.

SCAM ALERT - 800 TRANSFER AND 809/876 AREA CODE CALLS

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:37:13 +0000

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has become aware of a long distance phone scam that may lead consumers to inadvertently incur high charges on their phone bills. For further information on this scam please refer to the following link http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/809.html.

Jury Duty Scam

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 11:57:34 +0000

Most of us take summons for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of scam has surfaced where the caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant. The scam has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma, Illinois, and Colorado. The scam is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they're with the court system. Simply tell the caller NO, hang up the phone, and report the call to us immediately.

The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

IRS Tax Refund Scam

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 11:56:06 +0000

The Millard County Sheriff’s Office has received local documentation of a well-known fraud involving entities falsely representing themselves through an e-mail as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The e-mail suggests eligibility for a tax refund and then directs the reader to a web page where personal information is requested and compromised. Many of the current IRS scams involve e-mail solicitation or “phishing” for crucial and dangerous personal information. The IRS and Sheriff Dekker suggest that if you receive an unsolicited e-mail purporting to be from the IRS, you take the following steps:

Do not open any attachments to the e-mail, in case they contain malicious code that will infect your computer.
Contact the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 to determine whether the IRS is trying to contact you about a tax refund.

For more on the IRS Tax Refund Scam, please visit the IRS bulletin here.