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Monroe police share stories of popular scams, tips to protect yourself

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Criminals are constantly circling potential victims like sharks, trying to separate them from their finances with a variety of scams. One of the most common is a caller posing as an attorney claiming a loved one is in trouble and needs money right away to be bailed out of jail.

Other schemes involve a utility company warning of an imminent shutoff, a lottery promising a big prize once you pay a fee upfront, romance scams in which someone says they need money after a relationship is established, or offers a great investment opportunity via Crypto.

Monroe Police Lt. Kevin McKellick has seen his share of creative schemes in his nearly 20-year-career in law enforcement.

“Anything where someone tries to get your personal information or money from you, in any form, where you didn’t initiate the conversation, they reached out to you — stop, hang up or log off and contact that trusted family member or person supposedly in peril, or that organization that contacted you and see if it really was them,” McKellick said.

McKellick remembers when town officers were called to a local pharmacy to stop a man from wiring money to Mexico via Western Union, so kidnappers would let his daughter go free. The father was afraid and refused to believe the scenario wasn’t true.

To keep him under their control, the caller kept the father on the phone, demanded payment of a ransom immediately, and threatened to harm his daughter if he talked to police.

“The officers on scene had been at the Senior Center the day before, giving a scam seminar, and were repeating to the party many of the clear signs of a scam,” McKellick said, “and he refused to believe them. It was clear they were trying to keep his attention.”

In these scams, McKellick said callers often coach their victims on how to send money without attracting attention, telling them not to go to banks and not to tell store employees, who may be trained to detect the behavior of victims being coerced to wire large amounts of money, why they are making the transaction.

“The party in the store was visibly agitated and angry with police trying to stop him from sending the money,” McKellick said of the father being scammed. “While distracting him, we managed to find a phone number for his adult daughter in Baltimore. We got her on the phone and he refused to believe it was real. They’re very persuasive.”

“We had to put the phone up to his ear, so he could hear her talking while the bad actor was talking in his other ear, before he finally realized he was being scammed,” McKellick recalled. “He was devastated. He couldn’t believe he was about to fall for this.”

McKellick said criminals try to keep victims on the line, so they don’t have time to think critically about the story they’re being told. They also do it to keep them from calling an emergency number or the loved one, who is supposedly in peril. It keeps the focus on them.

Using what they know

“They do make compelling, convincing arguments sometimes,” McKellick said. “For instance, they’ll know information like your Social Security number. They may text images of realistic looking credentials. Employees of legitimate businesses or government agencies will not send you images of their ‘IDs’ to prove their credentials.”

One man was called by someone posing as a DEA agent, who demanded tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for not prosecuting him for buying illegal drugs in Mexico.

“The thing was, he did buy illegal drugs in Mexico many years ago,” McKellick said. “They know a little information and use it.”

In another attempted scam, the caller knew the potential victim’s brother owned a gray Ford and where he grew up. The caller claimed the brother was involved in a motor vehicle crash and needed money.

Social Security scams

Several scams involve someone posing as a representative of the Social Security Administration, who may tell victims there is a problem with their account and that it is either suspended, or issuing a threat to suspend their Social Security number, unless they pay fees immediately.

Oftentimes these payments are made via gift card, wire transfer or crypto currency.

“No one requires payment in gift cards,” Det. Kyle Stevens said. “Gift cards should be for people known to you, not for payment in services.”

McKellick said the real Social Security Administration will not threaten to suspend your number.

Other victims are told they need to fill out forms to get an annual cost of living increase. McKellick said the Social Security Administration does not call about this, because these adjustments are implemented automatically.

He encourages anyone receiving a suspicious communication about their Social Security not to engage with them and to contact the agency itself.  The Monroe Senior Center can often assist in these matters.

‘Computer repair’

Stevens said scammers sometimes pretend to be from Best Buy’s tech support and reach out to people claiming their computer’s antivirus has been compromised. The caller offers to “fix the problem” for way more than it’s worth.

Once accessing a victim’s computer they may say, “oh, we see your Social Security number is compromised too. Let me transfer you to law enforcement.”

But McKellick said the next voice on the line is not from law enforcement, rather it’s someone trying to extract more personal information from you.

Stevens said scammers who take over someone’s computer can manipulate what the victim sees on their screen, while accessing financial accounts in the background.

Those who realize they are being scammed when the criminal has access to their computer should immediately shut off the computer and unplug it, according to McKellick.

Facebook Marketplace

Stevens said another method thieves use is agreeing to buy something, then purposely sending a check that is significantly higher than the asking price.

McKellick said the criminal tells the victim they can send him the difference. Victims send the money in the form of a real payment, before their banks discover the criminal’s check is bogus.

He remembers a woman who was targeted by a Facebook Marketplace scam. She was selling furniture and someone agreed to buy it for $500. The man sent her a $5,000 check.

When the woman told him he overpaid, he apologized and asked her to deposit $4,000 in his bank account, saying she could keep her $500 and use the other $500 to pay for the movers he was sending to her home to pick up the furniture.

But no movers ever came and if police hadn’t stopped her from sending the man the $4,000, by the time the $5,000 check she had deposited into her own bank account had bounced she would have been out the $4,000.

A happy ending

When people fall prey to a scam, criminals remember them and they are soon bombarded by scheme after scheme.

“We dealt with one resident who repeatedly fell for scams,” McKellick said. “Every bank knew who she was. With the help of social services, we tried to get her power of attorney to help us stop her from falling for these scams.”

Of victims, McKellick said, “too often, they give away their information or the money and then they contact us and it’s too late, and it goes overseas. Once it’s given away, it’s very difficult to get back. It’s not impossible, but it’s extremely difficult.”

But in 2019, local law enforcement worked to create a happy ending for two elderly women, one from Texas and the other from North Carolina, who had mailed nearly $43,000 in cash to criminals after being victimized by a scam, in which they were told a grandchild was in distress and needed money.

In November of 2019, police officers worked with a United Parcel Service security advisor to arrest two men attempting to pick up packages delivered to vacant Monroe homes for sale.

Through their investigation, law enforcement was able to intercept another payment in the mail and police returned the money recovered in Monroe, cutting checks for $23,900 and $18,900.

The women received their checks in the mail on Christmas Eve and both called the Monroe Police Department to thank the town’s officers.

Staying educated

Several of Monroe’s police detectives are members of the International Association of Financial Crime Investigators. In fact, Michael Chaves, a retired Monroe detective, is currently vice president of the Connecticut chapter.

“We have a long history of sending our detectives to training courses to stay on top of current trends in scams,” McKellick said.

For private citizens, he recommends visiting the AARP website as a reliable educational resource on the latest scams.

“We keep up with trends and scams as much as possible,” Stevens said. “People need to protect themselves from this type of stuff. Your defense of that is to slow down, hang up, independently verify it, check your accounts, your family and friends.”

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