Mars police chief details recent phone scams
MARS — The holidays can be the most wonderful time of the year for scam artists looking to for an opportunity to line their pockets.
At a borough council meeting on Monday night, Feb. 5, Chief Mark Lint of the Mars Police Department detailed one such scam that occurred last holiday season targeting residents of the borough, prompting the police department to put a notice on the borough’s Facebook page.
“We have an elderly population in Mars borough, and they are especially targeted in this case,” Lint said. “Neither one of the people who were contacted were elderly, and both of them were able to recognize that it was a scam.”
Late last year, two Mars borough residents were hit by a scam over a six-month span in which they received calls supposedly coming form the Mars Police Department. However, this was a textbook case of “caller ID spoofing,” when a caller misleads a target by displaying a false caller ID.
While both managed to catch on to the scam in time and hang up before they gave away any information, Lint urges residents to remain vigilant.
“My greatest concern, of course, is somebody believing when they see that number coming up as ‘Mars Police Department,’ that they actually believe that it is an officer contacting them,” Lint said. “So that's why I sent out the alert.”
The first case occurred “within the last six months,” as a local business owner found himself hooked for nearly an hour by a scammer who eventually slipped up.
“It was elaborate. They transferred him from call to call to call,” Lint said. “People who expressed themselves as border control, customs, immigration … the whole way down.”
Eventually, the recipient of the call caught on to the caller’s accent and realized he obviously wasn’t a member of the Mars Police Department.
“He knew all the officers that worked for the police department,” Lint said. “He asked for the officer’s name, and the gentleman gave a generic name like ‘Officer Smith’ or something along those lines.”
A few months later, a woman received a call purportedly from the Mars Police Department which started on an ominous note. Fortunately, like the previous recipient, the woman caught on to what was happening and disconnected.
“It was a threat of arrest if money was not provided for owed fines, or something along those lines,” Lint said.
Lint stresses the Mars Police Department would not call people directly to demand payment of fines or to request money in any form.
“Never provide any information over the phone unless you verify the source,” Lint said. “Never provide any payment information over the phone unless the source is verified.”
On the Facebook post, the Mars Police Department advises residents to be cautious of any unsolicited phone calls, and to immediately notify their financial institutions if they believe they have unwittingly handed their personal information over to a scammer.
