Residents Need to be Wary of Scam Calls

The White Pine County Sheriff’s Office issued a statement earlier this morning about a scam taking place in White Pine County.

Several business located in the Ely area have reported that their employees have received telephone calls from a person who identifies themselves as a partner in the business, or a person who has been authorized by the owner of the business to do money transactions.

The caller instructs the employee to remove money from the business and deposit it into a bitcoin account to pay for licenses or other business transactions. The caller is very convincing, stating that he works with the owner who has authorized this transaction and it needs to be done right away. The employee will then take money from the business and deposit it into a bitcoin machine.

This is a scam and the business is out the money the employee has taken and deposited it into the bitcoin machine. These transactions are reportedly not reversible and some local businesses are out several thousand dollars.

The Sheriff’s Office is issuing their statement to warn all business and encourages anyone receiving communication like this by phone, email, text or any other method to contact their employer before taking any type of action.

The big question is how do you prevent being a victim of bit coin or most often called “crypto currency scams”?

• Don’t feel pressured to respond to threatening messages

• Never reply to people that contact you out of the blue

• Never share your financial information

Crypto scams generally fall into two categories: socially engineered initiatives to obtain account or security information, and having a target send cryptocurrency to a comprised digital wallet.

By understanding the common ways that scammers try to steal your information (and ultimately your money), you should be able to spot a crypto-related scam early and prevent it from happening to you.