Scam phone calls target Lodians

It’s that time of year again. Fake-IRS scammers have hit the phones, hoping to scare people into handing over their personal information.

And they’re not alone. Phone scammers pose as everything from Apple and Windows tech support to lottery officials and electric utility employees.

“If they call you and they’re asking for personal identifying information, that’s usually a bad thing,” said Sgt. Michael Manetti of the Lodi Police Department.

Any legitimate caller would already have information like your name, address or account number, he said. If they need to ask you, they may not be who they say they are.

While the police department hasn’t heard about more scam calls than usual, the IRS scam is always a problem this time of year, he said.

The IRS scam goes like this: Someone claiming to be from the IRS calls you and tells you that you owe tax money. If you don’t pay immediately, you’re going to jail, but they can take a payment right now, over the phone.

You just have to give them your debit card number, along with information like a Social Security number, the scammers say.

It’s not true. According to the Federal Trade Commission and the IRS, any citizen owing taxes will be notified by mail or in person, never over the phone.

“Just hang up,” Manetti said.

If you worry that the call might be real, he said, look up the company’s number in the phone book or online. Then call and ask whether they were trying to contact you.

That’s what Genie Gilman did when she got a call from a scammer pretending to be with Apple.

When she picked up the phone, a recorded voice told her that her iCloud account had been compromised, and asked her to stay on the line. It then switched to music.

It sounded professional, Gilman said, but she was suspicious anyway — especially because she’d missed calls from the same number.

“I said, ‘I have no Apple products, why do they keep calling me?’” she said.

When a live person finally picked up the call and started talking, their script sounded very much like the fake “Windows tech support” phone scam that has been around for a few years.

So she hung up, then decided to do a little investigating of her own.

“I called Apple and they said they don’t do things like that,” she said.

The call is similar to one where the scammer pretends to work for Windows tech support, then walks their victim through installing “virus protection software” that actually steals passwords and other information.

The fake IRS and Apple calls are only a few of the phone scams that have targeted Lodi residents in recent years. Other scammers have told Lodians that their power will be shut off if they don’t pay immediately with a Visa gift card, that a family member is in jail in Mexico and bail money must be wired immediately, or that they will be arrested if they don’t pay a fine right away.

“People get freaked out. I even got the IRS one, but I have an accountant,” Gilman said.

She hopes that sharing her call will help other people avoid being taken in by the scam.

“Who can afford it?” she said.