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Officer warns of local scams
While most care centers offer residents the chance to participate in a family or activity night, Arma Care Center, Arma, used its recent family night to inform and assist in the protection of its staff and residents.
Thursday night, as part of the monthly family night at the center, a public servant was on hand to inform those attending, about dangers and the latest concerns in public safety.
The event began with Arma Police Chief Albert Combs discussing mail and e-mail scams along with a nationally known, but not always nationally feared crime called identity theft.
While these criminal acts are commonly reported by major media outlets and large city police forces, it is certainly not limited to those areas. In fact, Combs believes these crimes are very common in this area, stating that he believes the majority of local residents have been faced with some form of con.
"I would suggest that if I took a true poll of 100 people, I would say probably 95 of them have had this information sent to them or mailed to them," he said. "It's something that is very common in Southeast Kansas. In the 11 months that I have been here with the Arma PD we've probably taken, I'm going to suggest, a dozen plus reports of what we believe are scams in just the Arma area."
The scams and cons Combs spoke of, often bare the resemblance of legitimate mailings or even checks. Combs shared a story regarding a case in which an area man received one of these fraudulent checks claiming he had won a sweepstakes, and unfortunately did not realize how much damage they can cause.
"The catch is, these (mailings) always come with a check. All I have to do is endorse that check, take it to my bank and cash it. Then, send this money back to the people who sent me this e-mail as a processing fee."
"This recently happened to a man in Missouri ... They sent him a check for $12,000 and all he had to do for the processing fee was cash this check and send the $12,000 in, and he was going to get $45,000,000. He was thrilled ... he cashed the check that day," said Combs. "A few days later, the bank called and said, 'the check was no good, you owe us $12,000."'
Not all scams are as cunning as this though. Another incident involving a local resident took place recently and simply threatened that if she did not pay a certain amount of money she would be killed. The e-mail sent to this woman begins by saying, "Is a pity this is how your life is going to end as soon as you don't comply." Further into the letter it reads, "Now do you want to Live OR DIE? As someone has paid us to kill you. Get back to me now if you are ready to pay some fees to spare your life, $2,000 is all you need to spend."
Combs was able to track down the sender of this letter using special serial numbers which identify the computer sending information.
"We started back tracking on IP addresses, we went through some South American countries and it ended up that this came out of Nigeria. But, these people do have people in the United States," he said.
This brutal intimidation tactic is commonly used to victimize seniors, according to Combs.
"When I got there this lady was in tears. She was in fear for her life. And this is typical, they use intimidation or fear or just some type of ruse. They will take advantage of elderly people, they would take advantage of you or me if they think they can get a buck out of us."
Beside mailing scams, con artists have several other ways to steal from unsuspecting bystanders. One of these is a device which is growing in popularity. Commonly referred to as a skimmer, this device is used by wait staff at restaurants and fits within a persons palm. The compact instrument can extract information from a credit card including a persons account number, social security number and address.
"Waiters and waitresses will take that skimmer and while they are walking up to the register they run your credit card through the skimmer. And they take all of your data off that magnetic tape. They go ahead and do the transaction for your meal, they bring it back, you sign off and later when they've got a bunch of them inside the skimmer ... they'll go out, hook it up to a laptop and sell all of this identity data. They've got your account, your Social Security Number, everything is on that tape."
While these examples all require some form of contact with the victim, there are ways for criminals to obtain personal information from victims without ever getting near them. A simple action most people make every day can easily cost a person thousands of dollars. Raising the small flag on the side of a mailbox.
"Everybody goes out to the mailbox -- especially if you live in a rural areas like us -- put their mail in and put the flag up. That's a signal to identity thieves 'here I am come and get me.' What they traditionally do worldwide is when they see that flag up they think that they can get in there and look at your mail. They look for you to be sending your Ward's payment off, your Sears payment, Your Mastercard or Visa payment. And what they will do, is take that information ... they will have a heyday with that. Literally in just a few hours they can have your credit card maxed out."
Combs is a former officer of the Bourbon County Sheriff's department as well as the Fort Scott Police.
Arma Care Center's Jan Mayfield said this activity served several purposes, informing the residents and thanking those who protect the community.
"We do it for the residents, the community and the families. We try to get the community involved as much as possible," she said. "Anytime that we might have a problem they (safety officials) are going to be the first ones on the scene. So, we just wanted to show our appreciation to them and the things that they have done for us."
Combs and Crawford County Fire District No. 2 Assistant Fire Chief Kenny Yoakum both received a gift certificate from the center for their services to the community.