Victim Location 22204
Type of a scam Utility
Over the past week in addition to the regular, recurring telephone call scams to my home number was a new one designed to attempting to prey on susceptible recipients. It was received on Thursday, February 27th at approximately 9:55 am and appeared to use caller number “spoofing,” since the caller ID number displayed was that of my next door neighbor. My number is listed with the National Do Not Call Registry, for all the good that does these days.
This newest scam was from an unidentified individual (live person, not a recording) purporting to represent my “power company,” but never mentioned my residential electricity supplier, Dominion Energy. They claimed I had been inadvertently overcharged for my electricity usage for the previous six months and were contacting me to arrange both a refund of the overpayment and to reduce my monthly power bill for the next six months as a means of apology. The caller was male and had a slight but unidentifiable foreign accent. As previously noted, the caller ID indicated the call was coming from my next door neighbor’s home number (hence my assumption it was being “spoofed”); not much call blocking can do in this instance since it would be counterproductive.
Of course I knew this was a scam from the outset both because I always check my various monthly utility bills, charges and usage levels as a matter of course. Plus, Dominion Energy would presumably only handle a billing/payment correction by hardcopy mail through its billing department.
So I played along with the caller for a bit without providing any information to them about myself, not my name, location, or anything to do with my current utilities. During the course of our conversation – while only asking a couple of clarifying questions – it became apparent the only information the caller had about me was my telephone number (which would have been available from their autodialing software). I did ask several times who he worked for and his stock response each time was simply: “a contractor working for your power company.”
What it came down to was the caller was requesting four pieces of information (my name, my utility account number, my address, and my checking account number) in order to (1) send the utility overpayment “refund” to me and (2) to provide a partial discount to my utility account for each of the next six months. None of this information was provided to the caller.
While I remained calm throughout our call, the caller’s voice revealed he was becoming frustrated and agitated after about 4 minutes. When I asked him what my previous month’s utility payment had been and how much of it was part of the overcharged amount, his demeanor changed and became more aggressive. At this point his voice became louder and quite forceful as he said: “Why would you need to know that. Don’t you understand that I am trying to do you a favor here? I can save you real money unless that’s not something you’re interested in.” (Clearly, a last ditch pressure tactic by a scammer who was feeling pressure that he’d already spent too much time with a target without success).
I just told him I was not interested and hung up.
By email I’m providing this information on what appears to be a new telephone scam – at least to me – and potential fraud or possibly identity theft effort to both the Arlington County Police Department (Virginia) and the Better Business Bureau. A separate hardcopy will be sent to Dominion Energy (Dominion does not have an email avenue for reporting fraud or similar scams).
Gary Mason
4712 8th Road South
Arlington, VA 22204
Victim Location 26062
Type of a scam Utility
Called saying that our electric would be shut off in a few hours due to non-payment unless we called back to the third number listed which was 844 244-8220. We instead called Mon-Power to verify that they did receive our payment and that they were not turning off our power.
It was bogus.
After the initial call from 844 410-6609 at 11:10 am; another call came from . As soon as I announced the name of my employer, they hung up.
It took time away from the Mon-power to verify this and from our employees, but they were unsuccessful in gaining anything from their attempt to get monies that was not even owed to anyone.
I hope in reporting this that others will be spared the difficulty all together. They try to trick people into calling them after the automated scare tactic.
Victim Location 76111
Type of a scam Utility
A recording says my power will be cut off if I don’t call that number and arang payment over the phone.
Victim Location 31901
Type of a scam Utility
The scammer called and said they were from Georgia Power Company and if they didn’t pay the bill immediately their power was going to be turned off. The scammer called many times. The scammer finally said if the consumer went to Walmart and got a Greendot card for $700 then they could stop the electricity from being turned off. The consumer almost believed the scammer. He said if the scammer didn’t call so many times they would have gotten away with it. Once he accused the scammer of being a scam he no longer called and does not answer the phone.
Victim Location 32548
Type of a scam Utility
My boss got a call at our shop telling him that the power bill was behind and the electricity was being shut off today. THe caller was told that he needed to get his bookkeeper to call him back. He was given the above number. I called and the name on the computer prompt did not match that of my utility company and when I asked the operator who answered about the discrepancy he hung up on me. I confirmed my actual utility was not in jeopardy and called back again to see how far they’d go. I gave a false account number and was told that my balance was over $800. I strung him along for about ten minutes then called him out as a scammer. He has since called back to our business threatening my personally, telling me he has bought a tv with my personal credit information that he has gleaned from my complaint on a phishing website .
Victim Location 23666
Type of a scam Utility
Person called our business and told employee who answered they were called from the "power company" and that technicians were on the way within the hour to disconnect our power if the amount of 811.23 was not paid. Office manager got on phone and ask them for the last four of our account, they gave the incorrect answer to that question. Once the manager told person that was incorrect, they said a explicit word and hung up.
Victim Location 07724
Total money lost $1,600
Type of a scam Utility
They called saying our power was going to be shut off at our place of business – when I realized I never received a bill for February, I panicked. They told me to get 4 Moneypak cards – value $400 each – I called them back and gave them to them and realized something didn’t seem right so I called JCP&L and sure enough, I was just scammed out of $1600