NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WKBW) — It is an effort to help folks in one Niagara County community to protect their families from falling victim to scams.
Identity fraud cost Americans about $56 billion last year with about 49 million people falling victim, across all age groups.
7 News' Pheben Kassahun headed up to North Tonawanda to see how the city and its police department worked to help spot and avoid scams.
The City of North Tonawanda Police Department has seen an increase in scam complaints and with new methods popping up city officials hosted a seminar to inform its residents about red flags.
"Coincidentally, when we were talking about doing this, someone had sent out an email to a group of North Tonawanda residents with my name on it. If you looked inside that, it would be a different email. It wasn't my actual email," City of North Tonawanda Mayor Austin Tylec said.
Mayor Tylec told Kassahun that one of these residents actually ended up buying $500 if Apple gift cards and sent him photos of them with them scratched off.
Mayor Tylec said, "Come to find out, someone reached out to a group of people and said, 'I need help. Can you send me something? I'm tied up in a meeting.' It was a little scary for the person at the time but luckily, I did get their money back. It took about a month. They did work with our police department to get a report. It just takes time. It's stressful."
Thursday night's seminar included stories about grandparents being scammed, dating scams, identity theft and fake prizes on the internet.
One person in North Tonawanda lost $70,000.
"Contacted this victim through phone and told them that their credit card was stolen and the number was being used to fund terrorism. They were going to be arrested if they didn't cooperate and turn over between $30,000-$40,000. Luckily, the victim caught on during these conversations and contacted us. We were able to catch these individuals in the act, Literally red-handed and make those arrests," City of North Tonawanda Police Department, Chief Keith Glass said.
If caught scammers can be charged with grand larceny.
"A lot of times, these scams are impossible to track. Most times, they originate from another country. It ties our detectives up. Not all of them are out of country. Some of them of them are local like the one I just talked about," Chief Glass said.
"It's really not fair to the community. We work hard here for our money. There's no reason we have to lose it to some schmuck somewhere else," Mayor Tylec said.
Ultimately, police say you should reach out to them and report instances where someone tries to take advantage of you.
