Scams can affect people no matter where they are at. Geography does not matter, and they hit people all over the United States. I live in the central part of the US and I see many people here affected by scams and I myself have been a victim of a scam or two, so I know that it can definitely happen to me. That’s why you always have to be vigilant and do not let emotion guide you when dealing with scammers as their main goal is to get you to panic because they want you to think that something is wrong and for you to act quickly.
Today we’re going to be taking a look at some specific scam attempts that come from the town of Newtown Township, PA and see 4 different scam tactics that scammers use in these situations. All of this is reported by the town’s police department. I will talk about what happened and what I would say as a Teller to try to avoid these situations.
Threatening to Reveal Hidden Things
This is a powerful and scary kind of scam. Someone contacts you either through email or phone and says they have found hidden things about you and if you don’t pay up, they will reveal what those things are to the public. I’ve received a text once threatening the same thing, but I knew it was not true and I never responded to it. This type of scam though is designed to get you to panic and think that your deepest darkest secrets are going to be revealed to the whole world.
I can tell you right now, that it’s not the case, but they want you to pay up quickly. They might want you to wire money, but a lot of times they want you to send cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. This is exactly what happened to a resident of Newtown Township back on February 20th. Close to 10:30 am, it was reported that they received an email from someone who said that they have access to their phone which contained evidence of stuff they had done wrong or meant to be kept secret.
They threatened to send this information to all this person’s friends or contact list unless Bitcoin was sent. Thankfully, in this case, the resident of this specific town did not fall for the scam and instead reported it to police which is what you should do in this case. As a Bank Teller, I’ve been fortunate that my customers have not encoutered this kind of scam. If one were to approach me with such an issue though I would tell them not to engage with the email or text, whichever method it was sent through, and to ignore and delete it. Under no circumstances should there be any attempt to send money or send money through Bitcoin.
No money was lost from this particular resident so everything ended well here, thankfully. The next one I’m going to talk about though, almost had a different outcome as a resident was in the process of taking a large some of money out of their bank account. Thanks to the actions of the police department, they were able to stop it. I’ll talk about that one next.
Law Enforcement Scam
Sadly, this scam tends to happen a lot and I’ve had a customer nearly fall for one of these. On February 24th. a different Newtown Township resident was in the process of falling for a scam. It was actually the wife of a home that initially fell for it and was at the bank to withdraw money.
It appeared that someone sent a message claiming to be from the FBI and that in order to avoid arrest, a large some of money had to be given to them. It was not known exactly how much they said, but when the husband notified police that his wife was at the bank, they were able to get up there and tell the woman that her accounts are fine and there’s not need to take any money out. She had initially taken out nearly $15,000.
Thank goodness the police got there in time and stopped this person from going through with the scam because of the large amount of money she had originally withdrawn. The husband did the right thing and called the police and let them know her wife went to the bank because of someone saying they were the FBI.
I am curious though if a bank teller or the police were trying to tell her that there is no need to withdraw that much money. As a Teller myself, I certainley would’ve asked some questions as to what the money was for as I would voice my concerns that she might be involved in some kind of scam, which is exactly what it turned out to be. That’s why I always have to be vigiliant and look for clues that may indicate something may be amiss. The next one I’m going to talk about has to do with another scam and unfortunately, this person lost money.
Romace Scam Strikes Again!
This scam was also reported On February 24th in Newtown Township. It was reported to the police department that afternoon that a person had fallen for a romance scam and had lost of lot money. It doesn’t say how much was lost, but it was definitely significant. At the time of the article, it said that the investigation is ongoing.
While it doesn’t say exactly how this particular person fell for this romance scam, it does say how a scammer will do it and it is something that I’ve talked about before. They’ll create a fake profile somewhere, say like Facebook Dating and then they’ll reach out to someone trying to establish a connection. They’ll reach out via messenger or may even try to Facetime you. I talked about some of this in a past article of mine.
After some time when trust is made, they’ll likely say that there is a great opportunity to make some money very quickly and say that it has happened to them and they want to share that with you. Typically, they’ll say that they made this money from cryptocurrency and they’ll provide you with a link to an app or program that they will want you to sign up for which will ask you for your bank account details or debit card information so that you can start “investing” and make money as they say.
The problem, the app is designed to fool you into thinking you’re making money very quickly when you’re really not. The scammer, who claims they have a love connection with you or other victim, will say to add even more money so you can make even greater profits. Again, the app is fooling people into thinking they’re making money when they’re not. At some point, if you try to withdraw those “profits”, your account will be frozen, you’ll be unable to contact customer service, and the person you had a connection with is suddenly gone. This is how romance and pig butchering scams work.
That’s probably what more than likely happened in this case which caused the victim to lose a large amount of money. They’ll more than likely never see that money again. There was one time I talked about how a person completely drained their retirement account and then took out a second mortgage basically on their house and lost it all. This makes me angry and sad because it’s money that this person worked hard for a big chunk of their life for and in a short amount of time that money is gone. Money that was meant to pay for expenses and vacations, health care and more. This is why I do this so I can inform as many people as possible to prevent things like this from happening. Even though it’s unlikely this resident won’t recover anything, if the FBI gets involved, I’m hoping they might be able to get something back for this person.
Identity Theft Still Runs Rampant
The last one I’m going to talk about is identity theft. It still happens quite a bit and is when someone tries steals your information such as a Drivers Licesne or Socail Security number and then tries to open say credit cards, lines of credit, maybe bank accounts somewhere and more. They can do significant damage to your credit if this happens and becomes very difficult to fight against since these were opened in your name with your information.
Sometime during the evening of February 24th, a resident of Newtown went to the police headquarters to report that their identity had been stolen. The police did create a report of the incident and told the person what they need to do to protect their indentity from similar incidents that could occur in the future.
The best thing to do if you believe your identity has been stolen is to IMMEDIATELY contact the major credit bureaus and freeze your credit. The onky way it can be unlocked or unfrozen is to answer specifc questions correctly which would be things only you would know. Time is of the essensce here because whoever stole an identity is going to try to act quickly to open up as many things, financially, in your name before they are stopped or your credit is frozen.
I’ve fortunately have not been a victim of this, but there have been several customers at my branch who have had this happen before. In fact, I recently had a customer last weekend who told me that his house was broken into, and all his checkbooks for multiple bank accounts he has along with his driver’s license had been stolen. Upon learning of this, I immediately placed a general alert that ws place on all his accounts and I had my bank’s back office disable his online banking so no one could get unauthorized access to his banking information that way. Fortunately, the next day, the customer came into the bank and we fully shut down all his accounts and opened brand new ones and with strict security protocls so that no one can access the accounts but him and whoever else he authorizes. I do know my manager said for him to contact the credit bureaus to freeze his credit.
Alerting The Authorities
These different kind of scams were all reported to the police in the town Newtown Township. It is actually a good idea to report scams or attempted scams to the police because you can have a paper trail and in some cases, they may send it off to higher entitites such as the FTC or the FBI depending on the severity of the scam. They’ll likely have higher or bigger resources to further look into these scams and in some cases, may even shut it down.
Now this is not a guarantee that all of that will happen, but with reporting them, there’s a better chance that there can potentially be something done about them versus no not reporting it and the scam continues to affect other people. Major companies such as PayPal, Netflix, Amazon, and others have an area within their websites to where you can report scams, especially phishing scams, to them so that they themselves can try to shut them down.
I’ve gotten a lot of emails in the past that claim they are from some of those companies listed above and they’ve all generally said the same thing that in that there is something wrong with my account and that I need to take action immediately to resolve the issue or they threaten my account will be shut down or some other adverse action. I know those emails are not legitimatelly from those companies because of where the email itself actually came from and how they address me in the body of the email.
Do not be embarrased if you fall for a scam, contact local authorities immediately because in some rare cases, they may actually be able to help either to stop the spread of the scam or even potentially getting some money back if it was lost to a scam. I know in one video I saw on YouTube, a lady at a convience store was depositing a large sum of cash into a Bitcoin ATM. Another person noticed the woman doing this and so she contacted police and they arrived in time to stop the woman from sending all the cash she had to a scammer that was on her phone.
The police officer told the scammer to stop what he was doing and he ended up yelling at the officer that he has no right to do that and kept yelling at the woman to hit done on the screen of the Bitcoin ATM. The police officer said under no circumstances she should do that because once the done button is hit on the screen, all those thousands of dollars she inserted into the ATM would be completely gone and sent to the scammer and there would be no way to get it back. The officer eventually hung up the phone on the scammer and ignored the phone when he repeatedly tried to call back.
Thankfully, after calling the ATM customer service line, the lady was able to get all of her money back and has been told by police that no bank will ever tell you to take money out of your account to send it somewhere else and that who she was talking to was a scammer. They gave her more information about what to look for when it comes to scams and how to avoid them. If you want to read more of the police reports of scams from Newtown Township, you can do so be clicking here.