Guthrie residents need to be aware of a current phone call scam that has already cost one person thousands of dollars.
Guthrie News Page has learned of multiple phone call scams to elderly residents and are now alerting all residents to be aware.
The scam begins with a person calling claiming to be a public defendant and representing the person’s grandchild.
They go on to say they have confiscated the grandchild’s cell phone and that the grandchild only wanted them to contact a grandparent.
In the next step, the person then requests a credit card number. If they are unable to get any type of credit card information they then suggest using a money transfer method.
The method is to transfer money by a MoneyGram, a system that allows friends and family to send money by either using a credit card or bank account.
One person was recently scammed out of $8,000 from their bank account.
Guthrie Detective Jeremy Thorne says if you ever receive a call and believe it may be a scam, you’re to write down the number, time and date of the call so that the department could log the information for future reference.
“They should try to decribe the caller (ie. male/female, accents etc. ). And not to give out any personal information over the phone anytime some one calls. If a person was in jail they get phone calls and would call themselves, not use an attorney.”
I’ve had a phone call from a man (foreigner) that told me I had a very bad virus on my pc and he was from Microsoft. He wanted me to log on and go to a website so he could fix the problem. He said ” OK ” allot, wasn’t falling for it, but I think people need to be aware of this too and I don’t have a virus.
I got the microsoft call last week too. I told him I had an anti virus program and didn’t need what he was selling… He said, “But I’m from Microsoft, you don’t understand…” I hung up on him. I too assumed it was a scam.