HJNews on a recent scam hitting the valley:
“This is a new twist on an old scheme,” said Cache County Sheriff spokesperson Matt Bilodeau. “They’ve got somebody’s credit card number and they’re trying to process it through a business.”
Tami Pearce, office manager at Transportation Repair Inc. in Logan, said she received a call last week from a woman named Jennifer who claimed that her uncle’s car broke down on the freeway near Brigham City.
Pearce said the woman claimed to be hearing impaired and was using a relay operator to communicate with the repair shop.
The woman said she wanted her uncle’s 1997 Cadillac Escalade to be towed to Logan so Transportation Repair could perform a diagnostic.
The caller gave Pearce a credit card number over the phone and asked her to charge $2,000 — $500 to diagnose the vehicle and $1,500 to transfer to a towing company in Brigham City.
“No, no thanks,” said Pearce to the woman through the operator. “And the weird thing was the next day I got another phone call about the exact same story but this time the person’s name was Wade.”
Pearce said the new caller used the hearing impaired service and used the same year, make and model of the vehicle needing a tow to Logan.
“If they’re in cahoots, they should figure out who they’re calling so they don’t call people twice,” quipped Pearce. “So I’m thinking this is maybe a stolen credit card and they’re going to wire this money back to themselves.”
Pearce cautioned other business owners and managers to be careful about transactions that seem out of the ordinary.
“I’m not gonna wire $1,500 to somebody I don’t even know,” she said. “And I’m not gonna take a credit card over the phone if I don’t know them anyway.”
Bilodeau said a slowed economy is often accompanied by an increase in identity theft cases.
Identity theft is serious business, and it’s been my experience that most people are taking a lot of steps to protect their identity and spot obvious scams. But people are often surprised by how many times they still open themselves up to identity theft every day. There are many services around willing to charge you to protect your identity, but don’t bother. All the information you need to stay safe is free, and available online. Check out the US Government’s Deter. Detect. Defend. page, and the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center. Both are great places to start.
