Caution can prevent serious financial losses
From June 15 to June 18, several Gilmer residents were targeted by online scams or theft attempts.
This time, the scammers won.
Money in online bank accounts can be transferred, accessed and spent from anywhere with just a few keystrokes.
Although this part of modern life can be convenient, it also makes it easy for criminals to steal from victims at a distance.
Scammers change their methods, but their general technique remains the same.
They tell a lie that creates urgency, get the victim to give out information, then steal the money.
Only one of the three scams highlighted here didn’t depend on deceiving a victim.
Here’s how that happened in the week of June 14 to June 20 in Gilmer County.
On Monday, June 15, a local woman got an email saying that she needed to make a payment for a Roku account.
Although the victim didn’t have a Roku account, she searched Google for Roku customer service.
The person she spoke with advised her to pay for the account with a gift card that required a code.
When the woman entered the code, it gave the criminals access to her phone.
The scammers then stole $200 from her bank account and $59.99 from her PayPal account.
After contacting Gilmer County Sheriff’s Office (GCSO) Deputy Scott Camp, the woman contacted PayPal to try and reverse these transactions.
The next scam relied on a mix of shock and embarrassment. It happened the same day.
A local man seemed to have connected with a woman on a dating app.
After they exchanged numbers, the woman told him she was 17. Then, she sent him an explicit video and photo.
The man deleted the images. But he then received a text from a man claiming to be the woman’s father. The father said that after confronting his daughter about the inappropriate texts, she went on a rampage, destroying things in the house.
The father then asked the man if he could help pay for the damages the woman had caused through Venmo.
Although the local man tried to pay, the payment failed to process.
When he contacted the GCSO, Deputy Dustin Cooper told him this interaction was almost certainly a scam.
The last digital theft involved an intercepted theft.
On June 18, a Gilmer resident called the GCSO after receiving a message from his bank that his account had been overdrawn by $6,600.
The thieves had gained access by somehow intercepting the man’s monthly life insurance payment check of $200.
After getting the check, they altered it to allow them to withdraw $8,730.
An investigation found the altered check was made payable to Shaverick M. Farrior, and deposited through a St. Paul, Minnesota ATM.