{"id":4671,"date":"2019-11-14T20:31:43","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T01:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=4671"},"modified":"2019-11-14T20:31:58","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T01:31:58","slug":"polk-county-sheriffs-office-warns-to-be-cautious-of-utility-company-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/11\/14\/polk-county-sheriffs-office-warns-to-be-cautious-of-utility-company-scams\/","title":{"rendered":"Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office warns to be cautious of utility company scams"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office has\nreceived a report of a telephone scammer posing as a utility company. In this\nparticular case, the person who received the call did not fall for the scam and\nhung up on the caller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scam works like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The victim receives a phone call by\nsomeone claiming to be from a utility company (in this case, it was TECO), and\nstates that the victim is behind on payment. The caller tells the victim that\nin order to prevent their electricity from being shut off, they will need to\nsend the “company” money immediately. Typically, in scams like\nthis, the caller will ask for money cards or gift cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScammers tend to be aggressive and\npushy and act with a sense of urgency. Decent and legitimate companies don\u2019t\nconduct business that way. Protect your money and your personal information;\nnever give it up when you can\u2019t be sure of who you\u2019re talking to.\u201d<\/em> \u2013 Grady Judd, Sheriff.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few things to remember:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7<\/strong>       <\/strong> Some phone scammers can make your Caller ID show that the\ncall is coming from someone or somewhere that it is not. Some scammers have\neven done this to make people believe they were receiving a call from the Polk\nCounty Sheriff\u2019s Office, when that wasn\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7<\/strong> <\/strong>       Utility companies DO NOT REQUIRE<\/strong> payments\nby money card or gift cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7<\/strong>        Be cautious of ANYONE <\/strong>who calls to ask you\nfor payment, especially if they are aggressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7<\/strong> <\/strong>       If the call sounds suspicious, ask questions—Who are you?\nWhat department are you in? Who is your supervisor? Then hang up, look up the\ncompany\u2019s phone number on a past bill, and call that number back so you know\nyou are definitely speaking with a company representative. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office has received a report of a telephone scammer posing as a utility company. In this particular case, the person who received the call did not… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","category-sheriffs-corner"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}