COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Columbus police Forgery/Fraud Unit is putting out the word about a couple of scams that have hit the area.
One attempted con involves the Internal Revenue Service while the other uses the name of a well-known high-tech company.
In the first scheme, someone calls the victim, claiming to be from the IRS, claiming the victim is on the verge of being sued, in an attempt to convince the victim to give the caller money to cancel out a fictitious debt, Det. Erik Stoddard said. The number may have a 202 area code, which is the Washington D.C., but Stoddard says the area code can be falsified easily.
Stoddard says the caller usually tries to get the intended victim to purchase a Green Dot money cards and relay the card number to the person pretending to be from the IRS. The card number is then used to load a credit card.
The IRS says it never contacts people by phone.
In the second scam, the caller claims to be from Microsoft Windows tech support and says there is a problem that is resulting in bad information being sent out from the victim’s computer.
Stoddard says the caller will say that, if the victim logs on right away, the caller can clear up the problem while the victim waits. The caller can then steal valuable information from the victim’s computer or lock the computer up and hold it for “ransom.”