The Newton County Historical and Genealogical Society hosted Decatur Police Chief Joedy Pennington at its May meeting on Saturday at the County Human Resources Building in Decatur. Pennington informed the audience about phone and online schemes and how to best avoid them.
Pennington said that recently, his department has seen scams that targeted Decatur residents involving the Publishing Clearing House and the Internal Revenue Service. The Publishing Clearing House scams usually tell the targets that they have won the sweepstakes but that they have to send money in order to receive their winnings. The IRS scams involves the scammers telling the targets that they owe the IRS for tax payments and that they need to send a payment or face prosecution.
“It happens all the time, and it happens everywhere. These people have no conscience apparently,” Pennington said. “I’ve been the chief of police in Decatur for 13 years and in the past six years it’s gotten a whole lot worse, I guess because of the technology.”
He also discussed online viruses that will lock the computers of targets until a fee is paid.
NCHGS members told their own personal stories such as scammers calling them pretending to be friends or family members who are in need of money.
Joyce Nicholson said she got a call from someone pretending to be her grandson who told her he needed money after getting into a car wreck and needed to pay a hospital bill. After realizing that the person wasn’t indeed her grandson, the scammer hung up.
Pennington warned not to give out our personal information like social security numbers and addresses. He said that the scammers can look up information on targets’ social media accounts and even copy friends’ photos.
The scammers use cell phone apps that can duplicate various numbers for each call and are virtually untraceable.
Pennington said that there was a rash of scam calls from Kingston, Jamaica to Decatur residents about three years ago. Pennington contacted the FBI office in Jackson but the official there said there was not much they could because the calls were coming from outside the U.S.
He advised residents not to answer calls from unknown numbers and immediately hang up when they suspect a scam call.
