LCSO Message of the Week: December 13, 2024

The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office is continuing its dedication to more community involvement. This week, I personally taught “Preventing Senior Scams” at the Dayton Senior Center; the entire Command Staff took part in mock job interviews at Silver Stage High School, and Shop with a Sheriff is tonight.

Before and after the holiday season, there is an uptick in scams that target our seniors. We have hoped to reduce the amount of victims being scammed out of their hard-earned money in Lyon County. The following information has been presented in person to over 500 seniors in Lyon County and thousands of seniors through our social media pages. These are the common scams we have seen in the recent months in Lyon County:

Scammers will then ask their targets to take out large sums of money or make a wire transfer to “save” their grandchild.

The scammer will even use the real name of the victim’s grandchild and other identifying information they find online to make the scam more believable. In other cases, the fraudster will even pretend to be the grandchild and claim to be in trouble

Scammers will even call claiming that there is a warrant out for the victim’s arrest. They could go to jail if they don’t pay a fee or relinquish their financial information.

During tax season, scammers will call elderly people claiming to be from the IRS and say there’s an issue with their return. They’ll collect information to “secure” your tax file, but in reality, they’ll use it to file phony tax refunds and commit identity theft.

In this scam, the imposter claims your SSN has been suspended due to an alleged crime. To reinstate it, they will demand payment, usually through gift cards. Please remember, no legitimate company or government organization takes gift cards or Bitcoin as a form of payment over the phone!

The mock interviews at Silver Stage High School allowed Sheriff’s Office leaders and other community leaders the opportunity to meet with and provide guidance and mentorship to Silver Stage students. Many great students are coming out of SSHS, and we are looking forward to seeing them as productive members of the community.

Respectfully,

Sheriff Brad Pope