the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, the Ridgewood Police report a South Broad Street resident responded to Ridgewood Police headquarters on June 14th to report a fraud. The victim reported an unknown actor contacted her by phone, identified themselves as a representative of the Department of Treasury and persuaded the victim into providing her social security number. The victim then realized the caller was attempting to scam her when the caller requested money to prevent arrest.
The US Department of Treasury warns there are several variations of this: in one, scammers call an individual asserting that the individual has been awarded a grant or a similar sum of money and requests personal information or a sum of money/gift cards (iTunes, Steam, etc) to “release” the funds. The Treasury does not have any such programs. Likewise, e-mails or messages that seem to be from the Treasury that request information or demand a fee for a release of funds from OFAC or FinCEN holds are entirely fake. We urge recipients of such calls or e-mails to be extremely wary of any scheme requiring an advance payment for a later promise of funds—these are hallmarks of scams.
A similar scam is a caller falsely representing that he is from the Internal Revenue Service or impersonating an investigator from this Office and demanding payment or information. These callers have been described as threatening or abusive, and tell victims they need to make immediate payment to forestall arrest. THESE ARE FRAUDS. PLEASE EXERCISE CAUTION IN YOUR DEALINGS WITH ANYONE PURPORTING TO BE FROM A GOVERNMENT AGENCY AND DEMANDING MONEY OR INFORMATION
Stop answering your phone