Police are reminding Sioux Falls to stay vigilant against scams after a local woman reportedly was lost over $150,000 in a “fairly common type of scam.”
Police say a 74-year-old woman reported a scam that started almost a year ago when she received a call from Publisher’s Clearing House saying she won a prize but had to pay taxes and fees to claim the prize.
“We don’t talk about every single scam that’s out there, but certainly there’s some ones like this, especially when you talk about larger amounts that could affect people’s lives,” Sioux Falls police spokesman Sam Clemens said at daily briefing Thursday.
In this case, Clemens said there’s no indication the scammers are local, but it’s difficult to track with “spoofed” phone numbers and burner email accounts.
If you’re a victim of a scam, Clemens said the first step is to report it to the police then to provide as much information as you can.
More: Victim loses $20K in bitcoin scam, Sioux Falls police say
And while the department has fraud detectives, Clemens said the chances of recovering those funds aren’t high.
“Most of the time, once you give money to scammers, it’s gone. We’ll do what we can to try and identify them to get the money back but the chances of that are pretty slim,” Clemens said.
In December, police reported that resident was scammed out of $20,000 in a Bitcoin scheme.
“The scammers are good, unfortunately, at what they do. They are able to convince people of a lot of things that aren’t true and it’s because of the way that they are explaining this. Sometimes there’s an urgency to it, sometimes it’s ‘You have to do this, and then we’ll get you this on the backside of it,'” Clemens said.
Clemens also shared some tips how to identify a scam before sending any kind of money, digital currency or gift cards, including verifying if the prize is real and not using the numbers given out by the scammers.
“These organizations that have prizes, they are not going to require you to pay money upfront to get it and that should be the red flag. So if somebody claims that you have won some type of prize or award and you need to pay them before you can get that prize, that’s a red flag, that’s a scam and don’t do it,” Clemens said.
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Woman scammed out of $150k in fairly common scam, police say
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