State Rep. Paul Opsommer today warned local residents of a new scam in which criminals fool victims into believing they will receive a $1,000 government grant to pay off electric, cable and gas bills. The victims are tricked into giving up their Social Security numbers and bank account information.
\n“Several cases of this scam have been reported in west Michigan, and I want to make sure area residents know about it so they can protect themselves,” said Opsommer, R-DeWitt.
\nOpsommer pointed to tips from the Better Business Bureau aimed at keeping people from being made victims. They include:
\n– Never provide banking information or your Social Security number to third parties without guaranteeing their identity;
\n– If you receive a call from someone claiming to represent your utility company, hang up and call the company immediately to verify the information given to you by the caller; and
\n– Be a hard target. Pressure tactics are frequently used to scam unsuspecting victims. Don’t give anyone any personal information unless you have verified the purpose of the request is legitimate. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
State Rep. Paul Opsommer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}