“The Toms River Police Department would like to educate our residents about an ongoing phone scam being perpetrated upon businesses and homeowners,” the Department announced today.
The scam begins with a phone call purportedly from Jersey Central Power and Light Company. The alleged representative informs the victim that they are delinquent on their monthly bill and that power would be shut off within hours unless they made payment over the phone. The victims are instructed to purchase “Green Dot” cards in the amount of the payment that is due and then either enter the payment information on a website or call back the suspects.
Green Dot cards can be purchased at numerous local retail establishments. They allow the purchaser to “pre pay” money onto the cards which can then be used to debit the accounts electronically.
“In the last week we have had four reports of this incident occurring, three businesses and one residential homeowner were contacted by phone,” the Department said. “The criminals were only successful one time. We are working with the power company to apprehend any suspects and they state that this is a nationwide scam that uses local phone numbers, which give the scam an appearance of legitimacy. Residents are urged to never make a payment over the phone unless they are the ones initiating the call and utilizing a phone number that appears on your monthly billing statement.”
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Here is another scam call I got the other day. A guy calls from Canada calaiming he is from Washington state and he is from windows operating system.. He says my computer has been hacked. The hackers are using my computer to send illicit illegal photos and commit other crimes. Then he directs you to click the start button, clcik run and type in a command to block the hackers. At that point I hung up.
another scam i got the other day was a heavily accented guy telling me i was eligible for a $6,000 grant. he was going to start telling me what to do in order to obtain this grant (a free gift from the state!) when i told him i dont believe a word and he promptly hung up!
if you are ever suspicious about who is calling you, whether it is a scam or just an annoying telemarketer, pull a “tom mabe” on them. when you answer the phone identify yourself as officer johnson and tell them they just called an active crime scene. ask them their relationship to the deceased (after all, they just called, so there must be a relationship!) and when they start procrastinating, tell them they better provide answers quick, since yo are tracing the call and they will be labeled an accessory to the crime.
Good stuff gershon