The Oregon City Police Department is warning residents to always be on the lookout for scams.
An ever present issue, officers frequently respond to calls from residents who were taken advantage of by unscrupulous people, oftentimes losing tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. When combined with the economic pressures people are facing every day, the consequences quickly add up.
“This is a very big problem. The total loss from fraud reports I’ve taken in the past 12 months is more than $500,000,” said Officer Brian Hutteball. “That doesn’t include the fraud reports taken by other offices in the department,” he said.
Ofc. Hutteball specializes in these types of crimes, and routinely speaks to local groups in the community about how to recognize them. He said the first step to protecting oneself is to keep an eye out for common warning signs.
“If you receive a text, call or email expressing urgency, secrecy or a need to wire money, buy gift cards or withdraw large sums of money, or deposit money into a cryptocurrency account, these are all red flags,” said Ofc. Hutteball.
He said the most common scams currently being reported include the jury duty scam, refund scam and variations of the relationship scam.
Jury duty scams involve the criminal posing as a local law enforcement officer. They frequently use names of real officers and will sometimes spoof the phone numbers they are calling from to make it look like they are calling from that same local law enforcement agency or their dispatch center. They inform the intended victim they missed jury duty and owe a substantial fine that needs to be paid through gift cards, a peer to peer payment system like PayPal, or sometimes cryptocurrency.
The refund scam typically involves the scammer attempting to refund a charge that is supposedly pending against the victim’s bank account. In reality, there is no pending charge, but the scammer convinces the victim an oversized refund was placed in their bank account blaming the victim for this error. The victim, who believes additional money was incorrectly placed in their account, is instructed to withdraw money from their account and send it through various means such as gift cards, cash withdrawal for pickup by a “courier” from the victim’s house, wire transfers, and cryptocurrency purchases.
The relationship scam is frequently done through online dating. After meeting someone online, the scammer will work to build a high level of love and trust through daily phone calls and text messages. After building that deep level of trust, some type of problem will develop after several weeks of “dating” where the scammer needs assistance with money. This can go on for an extended amount of time leading to the victim losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“It’s best to verify before making any payments you hadn’t anticipate. If you receive a suspicious call, hang up and call the person or business using their known numbers and verify,” said Hutteball.
.png)