State Police Credit/Gift Card Scams In Somerset Co.

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(PRINCESS ANNE, MD) — The Maryland State Police Princess Anne Barrack has seen a rise in gift card scams, mainly targeting the elderly.

Most often, consumers that use gift cards to pay a scammer are drawn in by an imposter scam. These can take on many forms, but the ones most likely to rely on gift cards as a payment method were government imposters, family imposters, business imposters, and tech support scams.

In these scams, the scammers convince consumers that they must pay using gift cards. The reasons they present vary, but they always come back to the idea that a consumer must go to a retail outlet, purchase physical gift cards, and then provide the PIN numbers on the cards to the scammer. Reports suggest scammers favor certain brands of gift cards, and those change over time.

DO NOT USE A GIFT CARD to pay the IRS or Social Security, tech support, a family member in trouble, ransom or to avoid arrest or deportation, a member of the military, or to keep your utilities on.

Anyone who encounters one of these scams should report the fraud to The Maryland State Police Princess Anne Barrack at 443-260-3700.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: https://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at https://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at https://so.md/expungeme.