LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. (WYMT) – In this day and age, scam calls are increasing in popularity, with new and more creative scams popping up each day.
“We all want to get something for nothing if we can but that’s not true to life,” said Deputy Gilbert Acciardo with the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office. “If it sounds like its too good to be true than it is too good to be true and someone’s probably trying to get your money.”
Innocent people can fall victim to phone scammers. Scammers are people or organizations posing as something they are not in order to get money.
“All too often these scammers are out [of the] country and you cannot track them down,” said Acciardo. “You probably lost your money if you get scammed.”
Acciardo added that scammers target one demographic more than others.
“They tend to target senior citizens. They’re thinking they’re retired; they have some money stored away,” he said.
If you get a call from someone and they are asking for personal information or say you must send them a certain amount of money to receive a larger prize, its always a scam.
“There’s many of them; the IRS scam, the Social Security scam, just whatever situation that a person can come up with to try to scam money off of someone, they’ll try it,” he said.
Acciardo said a new scam they’ve been seeing pertains to Publishers Clearing House. Callers claim the person on the other line has won $4.5 million, but they must send the caller a visa card with $499 in…
