New Payments Scam, Same Payments Tool

There’s a new twist to the payments scam in which fraudsters pretend to be utilities that want “overdue” bills paid by prepaid cards, according to Electric Co-op Today.

Those scammers usually instruct victims to put cash into a prepaid card and then call a toll-free number to give the scammer the card’s serial number. But some Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative customers are being told to mail the prepaid card to a specific address, according to the Manassas, Va.-based utility.

Just using the mail for any illegal activity is an additional crime, according to Tom Ouellette, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. But the USPIS hadn’t heard of the “mail in the Green Dot card” approach before.

The scam calls usually appear to come from a utility by “spoofing” the caller-ID number to display the utility’s number, not the number the call is coming from.

In other recent cases in Virginia, fraudsters use a different caller-ID number. When potential victims call that number, a recording says, “You have reached the disconnect office for the gas and electric account” and tells people who have received payment notices to leave a phone number and they will be called back. Although many of the calls in the current spate of fraud mention Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative, NOVEC is only an electric utility, and doesn’t sell natural gas.