Scam phone calls continue to be a problem in central Wisconsin, police say.
The Marathon County Sheriff’s Department on Monday issued a warning on its Facebook page about the issue.
The post reads:
Both robocalls, and calls from live people are being received from various phone numbers. Among other scams, callers have claimed to be from the IRS with a warrant for your arrest for delinquent taxes, or they have claimed to be calling about a federal grand jury hearing for a lawsuit you’re involved in.
These phone calls are scams and the best thing you can do is hang up without providing any information to the caller and without pressing any buttons during the call.
The IRS does not threaten taxpayers with lawsuits, imprisonment or other enforcement action and does not solicit payment for delinquent taxes by phone, text message, email, or social media websites. For more information about IRS scams and how to protect yourself, visit https://www.irs.gov/uac/tax-scams-consumer-alerts
If you are needed to testify in a federal grand jury hearing, you will be served a subpoena by a law enforcement officer in person. You will not receive a phone call requiring you to provide personal information.
Technology makes spoofing phone numbers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_spoofing) easy for scammers to make it appear that they are calling from a legitimate business or government agency. It also allows scammers to change the number that they appear to be calling from often in efforts to evade law enforcement.
The Marathon County Sheriff’s Office does not investigate scam attempts that do not result in a loss to the targeted victim. There are simply too many phone scams attempted everyday and the resources needed to investigate each one would be enormous.
To learn more about how to report telephone scams, please visit the State of Wisconsin Department of Consumer Protection at https://datcp.wi.gov/…/Programs_Ser…/ConsumerProtection.aspx or the Federal Trade Commission at https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/#&panel1-1
