{"id":63066,"date":"2026-02-25T18:06:46","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T23:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=63066"},"modified":"2026-02-25T18:06:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T23:06:51","slug":"invoice-scam-warning-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2026\/02\/25\/invoice-scam-warning-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Invoice Scam Warning\u200a"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" data-dominant-color=\"e97b5d\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #e97b5d;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"200\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/unnamed-59.webp?resize=600%2C200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-63067 not-transparent\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/unnamed-59.webp?w=600&amp;ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/unnamed-59.webp?resize=300%2C100&amp;ssl=1 300w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Recently, the Community and Economic Development Department became aware of a new scam after our customers received fake invoices that appeared to be from the &#8220;City of Lakeland Planning Commission&#8221; and City Manager Shawn Sherrouse asking for payment of additional fees for pending applications (see sample below):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><tbody><tr><td><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"560\" src=\"https:\/\/ci3.googleusercontent.com\/meips\/ADKq_Nbuuc1yYLNNzmTJRpwxutT5kiAtYg4PMGQ_4zjLK0BZaJuJn7DASX9BTuLSoPvvkUtm2aJIcrTLp-laA1u_Ln5fJGog7b1TSBPwi5-qiamNr1uc_ux2A7SubGO5rNoYxoLvKlxL9gp7bUM5r1u9ZVLRnYvlvg=s0-d-e1-ft#https:\/\/files.constantcontact.com\/6cd2daac701\/59344e5d-7390-4f9d-9d43-0b5f52cf77f4.png?rdr=true\" alt=\"\"><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>E-mails and invoices like the example above are not legitimate. These scams are designed to convince you to share personal financial information.<\/strong>\u00a0Neither the City of Lakeland Community and Economic Development Department, the Planning and Zoning Board, nor Shawn Sherrouse will e-mail invoices for payment of application fees or reviews.\u00a0All legitimate payment notifications are sent through iMS, the City\u2019s online application portal, as City of Lakeland(<a href=\"mailto:DONOTREPLY@lakelandgov.net\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">DONOTREPLY@lakelandgov.net<\/a>)\u00a0\u00a0If you are ever unsure about payment requests or any communications from our office, please call Community and Economic Development at\u00a0(863) 834-6011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, the Community and Economic Development Department became aware of a new scam after our customers received fake invoices that appeared to be from the &#8220;City of Lakeland Planning Commission&#8221;&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63067,"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":"7591","_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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNlwvMDJcL3VubmFtZWQtNTkud2VicD9maXQ9NjAwJTJDMjAwJnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiSW52b2ljZSBTY2FtIFdhcm5pbmdcdTIwMGEiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJmb250IjoiIiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.mWOkoXexVMOY9_pJlURIMnsxN1ckVPyXwbkRzGEiXKoMQ"},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[7591],"tags":[9758],"class_list":["post-63066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city-of-lakeland","tag-invoice-scam-warning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63066","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63068,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63066\/revisions\/63068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}