The citizens of Forest Hills and Rego Park are under threat from a new form of crime that has never plagued their community before; MoneyPak cards and phone scams designed to con money from elders. Lieutenant Brian Goldberg of the 112th Precinct alerted attendees of the community board about how these scams work.
“What these guys are doing is telling people to take money out from the bank in return for profits,” said Goldberg. Although Goldberg told the community that crime rates have dropped four percent within the past month, there has been a rise in crimes involving scams through phone calls and false promises of monetary gain.
In total, there have been three victims from these phone calls and it’s evident that there’s a particular audience these scams are targeting.
“These guys go after senior citizens and elder members of the community,” Goldberg stated. Joseph Hennessy, Chairman of Community Board 6, updated the community on what measures have been taken so far to prevent further occurrences of these financial scams.
“We have a special task force for these crimes,” said Hennessy at the beginning of the community board. In addition, NYPD Community Affairs officers passed around packets containing information about the various scams that have been reported.
The task force intends on catching these con artists by tracing the phone records of elders in the community to see if there is a persistent call source, one that may be responsible for the scams.
Pinpointing the perpetrators may have taken longer than expected for the task force because of the numerous methods used to scheme inhabitants of Forest Hills and Rego Park.
“They call people’s homes, asking for money, pretending to be someone else,” said Goldberg. “They say they’re from the cable company or pretend to be family members and ask for wire payments.”
Not only are they posing as workers from utility companies, but some of these “financial prank callers” are maximizing their efforts by shamming people into thinking they work for the Internal Revenue Service and that they need financial information for tax returns and audits.
How else do the scams work?
“Well, from what I understand, they call an elder’s household and falsely inform them that their cable or their heating will be cut unless they make a wired transfer to some account,” said Joshua Silverman, a member of the community board for the past three years. “Other things they say are that they are a family member of the ones they call and they need payment for a medical bill but it’s all really just a series of lies created to take money.”
Being alert to these phone calls was the message throughout the community board meeting as there is an apparent worry over these calls. These worries certainly heightened when Lt. Goldberg mentioned that there have been losses “up to $20,000.”
The NYPD community affairs officers passed around sheets which contained an effective way to fight off these con artists’ calls; simply hang up the phone when the caller requests financial information.
Although no arrests have been made, a task force is set on tracing the origins of these financial scam calls in an attempt to offer respite to the homeowners of Forest Hills and Rego Park.
The Forest Hills Herald 