SWAMPSCOTT — Residents should be careful while answering the phone, especially if the caller asks to be paid in gift cards.
The Swampscott Police Department reported that a resident got a call this week from a scammer whose number showed up as the Police Department business phone, 781-595-1111, and started requesting personal information.
“A police officer will not ask for information like Social Security numbers, or credit card information over the phone, unless it is part of an ongoing investigation and you have already spoken to an officer concerning (it),” wrote the SPD in a Facebook post about the incident.
This is just one of a recent wave of phone scams that have hit Swampscott and the greater North Shore area.
The Saugus Police Department reported a similar incident Nov. 10, when it received two reports from individuals who had been contacted by a person who claimed to be a Saugus Police officer, who demanded money from their victims.
“We’ve had a big influx of scams recently unfortunately,” said Swampscott Police Chief Ron Madigan. “With people taking advantage of peoples’ situations in the pandemic.”
One particularly malicious scam successfully targeted a Swampscott woman who wanted to make an investment for COVID-19 testing.
“A woman was contacted by a fake Facebook account asking her to send upwards of $20,000 for a COVID-testing investment,” said Swampscott Police Sgt. Jay Locke. “The typical, go buy Apple and Amazon gift cards. Unfortunately the woman sent out approximately $9,000.”
Locke estimates that the increase in reported phone scams is not the result of more scams occurring, but simply the result of more people being at home to answer phones during the pandemic.
Many scammers pose as authority figures, impersonating police, unemployment agency employees or IRS agents. They often threaten to arrest their victims unless they are paid in gift cards.
“We’ve had a couple reports of these,” said Locke. “None of these agencies would ever call you on that aspect and they would never want to be paid in gift cards.”
Swampscott detectives are currently looking into these incidents. Local police departments like Swampscott struggle to catch perpetrators of scams like this, as they often use computer-savvy techniques out of the realm of experience of local officers.
“The source of scams are really difficult to pin down because they often come from outside of the country,” said Madigan. “It’s a really elusive task to identify the source of scams. It’s a frustrating part of the information age we’re in. And it’s always evolving.”
In addition to these scams, police departments around the North Shore report daily instances of unemployment claim fraud.
“That has been the bulk of the recent situation with scams,” said Locke. “People come in and have found that another account has been opened in their name with their information.”
Police report that some other common scams include The Grandparent Scam, where someone calls claiming to be a grandchild who has been arrested and needs bail money, fake charities, Facebook get rich quick scams, and fake rentals.
The police encourage residents to ask suspicious callers for their call-back number, then to call the police department for advice.
Guthrie Scrimgeour can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @g_scrimgeour.
