Business Owner Thwarts Several Scam Attempts
Scams targeting local folks, especially the elderly, seem to be rising lately. Tony Brock runs The UPS Store in La Grange, and he sees it first hand.
“They call and prey on these elderly people, telling them they’re going to win money or they have to pay taxes,” Brock said. “We’ve stopped several of them and alerted the police department.”
“If these people are calling you and threatening you or promising you stuff, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is,” Brock said.
Brock said he knows of one victim who sent multiple checks totaling $40,000 to an address in Miami before The UPS Store caught on to the scam and stopped it.
On another occasion, Brock intervened when a local elderly woman tried shipping six new Apple MacBook Pro laptop computers to an address in Miami. A scammer called the woman and convinced her to buy the laptops from Best Buy and ship them to Miami. Brock alerted La Grange Police when he discovered the scam.
“They said they were part of a federal agency and needed assistance from the public,” said La Grange Police Chief David Gilbreath.
Brock said the scammers can be quite brazen in their tactics.
“They even called me at the store,” Brock said. “They said, ‘We understand you have these laptops.’” Brock said the scammer hung up when he asked for their name.
Gilbreath said he has no idea how the scammers target their victims. He said the scams come in a variety of flavors: “Fake charities – they claim to work for associations and get money from you that way,” he said. “There are computer technical support scams.
You get an email saying something is wrong with your computer and then you give them access to the computer. If your banking information is on there, they’ll get it. Another one going around is the Amazon account scam. They claim to be from Amazon.com and claim something is wrong with your account. You give them your information and then they have access to your account.”
Fake investment scams are another big problem. Scammers such as these promise victims extraordinary returns for an investment of a few thousand dollars. The victim sends money for their “investment,” but no returns ever materialize. There are also fake lottery scams. The scammer calls a victim and tells them they won a lottery jackpot or prize in a drawing. They tell the victim to send money to cover fees or taxes, but of course the victim never receives the prize.
Gilbreath said citizens should never give their personal information over the phone or email. If someone asks you to send cash, checks or gift cards through the mail or through carriers like UPS, it’s probably a scam, he said.
Brock said UPS tracks addresses of known scammers and blocks deliveries. He said many of these addresses show up as abandoned buildings or vacant properties. He said the scammers wait at these properties for a UPS truck to show up. They pick up the package and leave. If UPS catches on to one of these addresses and blocks it, Brock said, the scammers can simply move to a different abandoned property.
Vigilant UPS Store operators like Brock help to cut down on the scams, but Brock says he knows he can’t catch them all.
“If these are the ones we’re catching, how many are coming through the store that we’re not catching?” Brock said.