News brief: Bogus ‘collection’ calls on the rise locally

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Local law enforcement is cautioning members of the public not to provide their credit card information to phone callers in light of a large number of reports about scammers.

So many reports came during the month of June to the Centralia Police  Department, the Chehalis Police Department and the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office that they jointly issued an advisory.

“The callers are identifying themselves as the IRS or warrant service companies,” Centralia police detective Patty Finch stated. “In most reports, the callers are telling the victims that a warrant has been issued for their arrest or they are being sued.”

They are coming from various long distance numbers and some have asked for credit card information, according to Finch.

The detective shared a statement from the Internal Revenue Service that notes the federal agency “does not threaten taxpayers with lawsuits, imprisonment or other enforcement action” and “will never ask for credit or debit card numbers over the phone.”

Finch advises people to never provide account information over the phone until after independently confirming it’s a legitimate reason.

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One Response to “News brief: Bogus ‘collection’ calls on the rise locally”

  1. CrazyOldMan says:

    The local cops do not have the ability to deal with these out of state or out of country scammers. The feds could shut this stuff down if they wanted to. There should be an FBI task force that all of the local police departments can refer these cases to. The feds could easily track down these scammers. After all, in these cases, they are claiming to be IRS agents which is a federal crime. It really peeves me that our federal guvmint, which is spending billions bombing ISIS in Syria, can’t devote a task force to stopping these people who are fleecing vulnerable Americans of millions.