October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office has Domestic Violence Coordinators who reach out to domestic violence victims to offer their help. Learn how Sheriff's Office Domestic Violence Coordinators help DV victims find safety.
Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office: https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/Archive.aspx?AMID=43
The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office has issued an alert on its Facebook page about warrant and jury duty scams against Snohomish County citizens. The alert notes that the Sheriff’s Office receives reports of these scams on a weekly basis.
The scammers try to intimidate potential victim into paying money
to have a warrant lifted or from being arrested due to missing jury duty, often
through a phone call. An apparent trend is to demand that you pay by Bitcoin cryptocurrency.
As with many scams the scammers pretend to be someone they are
not. In this case, they may pretend to be from the Sheriff’s Office or from the
county court. Last year both the Sheriff’s Office and the Snohomish County
Superior Court issued separate scam alerts for scammers pretending to be from
their organizations.
The scammers immediately present you with a problem, you have a
fine levied against you or at worst the cops are coming to arrest you.
The scammers pressure you to act quickly, without thinking or
consulting with friends or family. They want you emotional so that you will not
think logically or analytically. They also want to isolate you so that they
have control.
And to get out of your “problem” you pay. The scammers want you to
pay in a way that cannot be traced or reversed. Using a crypto currency has been
popular lately with scammers. Like with gift cards, wire or money transfers,
crypto currencies are extremely difficult to reverse.
Understand that local police, courts, or other governmental
entities will not call you to demand an immediate payment for a fine or to get
out of an arrest warrant. Police are not in the habit of notifying people who
have warrants against them.
The Sheriff’s Office says that people report giving money to these
scams. While it seems that the warrant and jury duty scams are well publicized,
people are still victimized by scammers.
If you receive a scam call like this, hang up!
Also, report the scam to the Sheriff’s Office and to the FBI at www.ic3.gov.
And please, pass this information to your friends, family, and coworkers.
The more people who know about scams, the better we all can defend against scams.
Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=959726349514130&set=a.226070289546410
Federal Trade Commission:
South Snohomish County Crime Watch:
https://ssnoccrimewatch.blogspot.com/2023/04/scam-update-scammers-pretend-to-be.html
https://ssnoccrimewatch.blogspot.com/2023/08/scam-update-jury-duty-scam-and-watch.html
Criminals look for any way that they can gain access to your financial accounts to take your money. One method that they use is SIM Swapping.
A SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module) is a small circuit card
that resides in your cell phone that identifies that phone as belonging to you.
SIM cards can be removeable with the ability to be transferred between cell phones,
or your phone can have an ESIM that is code embedded in your cell phone that
identifies your phone as belonging to you.
If a criminal
can swap SIMs to their phone, then they can impersonate you and break into your
accounts.
A criminal
who conducts a SIM swap also conducts two scams.
1. They take personal information that they have gathered about you
from purchased data from data breaches, gathered from a phishing campaign, or collecting
sensitive information that you posted on social media to convince the phone
carrier to give them a new SIM with your phone number.
2. On successfully acquiring a SIM in your name, the criminal will
try to break into one of your accounts. If the account has text based multifactor
authentication (MFA) they can receive the code that your account sends out to
help break into your account.
Indications that
you have been a victim of SIM swapping include,
·
You cannot make or receives
calls or texts.
·
An online account is locked
because of suspected unauthorized access.
·
You receive alerts that
someone is attempting to access an account, and you do not recognize the
activity.
If you are
victimized with a SIM swap, take action:
·
Contact your mobile carrier
immediately.
·
Contact you bank and other
financial services.
·
Disable MFA, change account(s)
password(s), then enable MFA again.
·
Monitor financial accounts
·
Report to
o The FBI IC3- https://www.ic3.gov/
o FTC- https://www.identitytheft.gov/
You can take
action to discourage SIM Swapping by
·
Set a Pin for your smartphone.
·
Use strong and unique
passwords for all of your accounts.
·
DON’T POST EVERYTHING ON
SOCIAL MEDIA.
·
Use non-SMS MFA. Instead use
MFA with an authenticator app such as Microsoft Authenticator or Google
Authenticator.
Associated Press:
https://apnews.com/article/sim-swapping-protections-tech-tip-e05ac6b894312041a5c1e4333a28df2a
FBI:
National Cybersecurity Alliance:
https://staysafeonline.org/resources/sim-card-swap-scams/
Federal Communications Commission:
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/cell-phone-fraud
