CARTHAGE, New York (WWNY) – We’re learning of a widespread phone scam where crooks are calling strangers and threatening to shut off their power and asking for credit card information.
The scammers claim to be from National Grid and some of their would-be victims say they’re trying to scare people into giving them money.
7 News spoke with a couple of people who have received the calls. One of them says he’s been called several times.
“I’ve had five calls in a row, said Weldon Papineau of Carthage.
He says all of those calls have been in the past two weeks.
“You’re three months behind. How are you going to pay this? I’m not going to pay it. And he said, ‘Do you have a credit card?’ I said, ‘No,’” he said.
Papineau says the calls are from people claiming to be from National Grid. He says he argued with them and said he hasn’t missed any payments. They threatened to shut his power off and send the police to his house if he didn’t pay.
“You’re a hostile person; we’re going to send the police too so that you don’t interfere when we shut your power off,” Papineau said the scammer told him.
Papineau isn’t the only one who has been getting calls. Darrell Lemmon in Cape Vincent says he got a similar call on Sunday.
“Well, they said if I didn’t have a payment in by the afternoon that my electric will be terminated, I’ll be shut off,” said Lemmon.
And that’s without receiving any notice. Neither Lemmon nor Papineau fell for the scam. Officials from National Grid say they are aware of the scams.
“We’ve seen an uptick in scams since the fall and certainly with the holiday season upon us, it leaves people vulnerable at the height of the season for scams,” said Jared Paventi, spokesperson, National Grid.
He says the two most common threats he has heard of are immediate service termination and scammers asking for payments via wire transfer or pre-paid credit cards. Paventi says both are red flags.
“We never threaten immediate service termination. That’s just not our practice. We also don’t accept payment via pre-paid debit or credit card,” he said.
Here’s another dead giveaway: if the person on the phone doesn’t have your account number, it’s a scam.
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