.jpg)
The online scams and phishing posts have been picking up in complexity over the last few months, one of which involves the Ely Police Department.
Assistant police chief Mike Lorenz was notified last week by a news agency in Wisconsin and others who said they saw a post about a missing child.
The Facebook post said the Ely Police Department found a missing child but couldn’t locate the child’s mother, and asked Facebook users to click on a link to help identify the child’s parents.
When the Ely Police Department was notified of this scam, they sent out a press release to indicate this never happened and to make sure no one fell for the scam.
“The post was portraying some sort of news article that the Ely Police Department found an approximately three-year-old boy,” said Lorenz. “The post said the police department was having trouble locating the child’s parents and if anybody had information to click on this link.”
The police department advises if Facebook users see mysterious posts involving the Ely Police Department not directly from the police department’s Facebook page, to be wary.
“Please be assured this is fake news! If you see one of these posts and there are any links within the post, they are trying to get you to click on do not open them! We are not sure what these people are attempting to gain by doing this, but we are guessing it is a scam of some sort,” said the Ely Police Department in a press release issued April 1.
This scam hasn’t been the only one making the rounds lately, Lorenz also wanted to warn people of an ongoing housing scam in Ely, which has lingered over the last few years in a tight housing market.
“People are posting fake rental property ads on Facebook,” said Lorenz. “Somebody will contact them who is interested in the rental, and then they have them Venmo a security deposit or some sort of deposit, but they end up having no association with the property at all.”
Another scam going around has involved PayPal and may be completely out of people’s control.
Myst e r ious PayPa l charges, some large and some small have been appearing in people’s bank statements who haven’t used the electronic money transfer system in years.
Elyite Lee Schumacher was one of the individuals targeted by this scam, and he said he was one of the lucky ones.
“I had 15 cents and then 16 cents taken out of the account on Feb. 2, and then 31 cents were put back in the account by PayPal,” said Schumacher.
While this would appear to be a typical move by Pay-Pal to verify an active card credit card on their website, Schumacher says he hasn’t used PayPal in years.
Schumacher said he knows a friend who had a charge of $1,000 taken out of their account in a similar fashion, and they were not able to get that money back because they didn’t catch it fast enough.
“I think people need to do due diligence these days and check their bank accounts regularly,” he said. “If you catch these things fast enough, they can be reversed.”
