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Noted Increase In Fraud Complaints

01/08/2013

Johnson County Sheriff's authorities have been working on an increasing number of fraud cases in the past few weeks, and remind you to use caution when receiving phone calls, mailings, e-mail or even personal solicitations in your home or business.

 Detectives are currently investigating a weekend report in which a woman received a call from someone claiming to be a representative of Microsoft. They informed her that they believed her computer was at risk for viruses, and asked her to go on-line and visit a specific website, while they were still on the phone. Once she had logged on to the website, they were able to take control of her computer, and advise her that she was at risk, and offered a number of plans to take care of the problem ranging in price from $99 to $250. She accepted the $99 offer. The caller instructed her to go to a form on their website to fill out her credit card information and that a representative from Western Union would call back with an authorization code which the reported Microsoft employee would get from her in a return phone call. She reported that she did receive a call from someone she believed was from Western Union, received the code, and then gave that code to the original caller when he called back. Not more than 45 minutes later, she received a call from her credit card company asking if she had approved a transaction that had turned out to be much more than the agreed upon price. She informed them that she had not, and the investigation into the fraud began.

 Residents are reminded to use extreme caution in any instance that might "sound too good to be true," and to not give out credit card or personal information to anyone that they might suspect of not being from the company they are said to represent. Should you have questions, or think you or someone you know might have been a victim of possible fraud, contact the Johnson County Sheriff's Office.