Residents warned about phone scam

Sat. October 31, 2009; Posted: 03:41 PM

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NORTH ADAMS, Oct 31, 2009 (North Adams Transcript - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- NCBH | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- The North Adams Police Department is warning residents about a new phone scam that is targeting mostly elderly residents.

Detective Richard Lesniak said that calls are coming into North County residents claiming that the person's grandchild has either been arrested or in an accident in Canada and needs a substantial sum of money.

"A lot of the time they'll just throw a name out there and they might get lucky, they might not," Lesniak said. "They'll say, 'This is your grandson, Bob. I've been arrested and I need you to send $4,500 or $5,000 to bail me out.' Then they'll say they have a lawyer there to talk to them and the 'lawyer' will tell them to get a money gram and call back with the reference number.

"Once they get that reference number, the money is gone and we can't do anything about it."

Lesniak said that three or four such scams have been successful in the last year with the most recent one being last week. He said that one was stopped by an alert clerk at Wal-Mart when a victim came in to get a money gram. The clerk knew of the scam and reported it to police.

"It's unfortunate because they target people who will get nervous and scared and not ask questions," Lesniak said. "They think 'This is my grandson, I need to help'."

Lesniak said there are simple ways to avoid falling prey to scams like this such as

asking simple questions like where the "grandchild" grew up or what their pets name was or family-specific nicknames. People can also call relatives of the grandchild of they are even expected to be out of the country.

He warned that phone scams like this have been on the rise recently but other, traditional scams are still out there like e-mail, scams, lottery scams and sweepstakes scams.

"As a general rule, never give out information like your date of birth, social security number or bank account numbers to anyone over the phone or e-mail unless you are positive of who you are talking to," Lesniak said.

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