When shopping at home, be alert for grinches trying to steal gifts and info

METRO DETROIT — The holiday season, while very much a joyous time of year, also is a time when criminals try to take advantage of others.

As many people will look to be charitable or purchase Christmas gifts for loved ones, a local bank and local police departments are offering advice to avoid package thefts and fraud.

Brian Dowgiallo, vice president of risk management at Genisys Credit Union, said the holidays tend to be their busiest time, as reports of fraud usually ramp up.

According to the banking institution, financial fraud can come in a variety of forms including identity theft, phone call and text scams, phishing scams, and fraudulent investment schemes.

People should be wary of unsolicited emails, phone calls or text messages requesting personal or financial information. They should also verify the legitimacy of any organization or person before making financial transactions.

Dowgiallo has been aware of scammers who use Facebook groups or community pages to take advantage of others looking for deals.

Detective Lt. James Breuckman, of the St. Clair Shores Police Department, has seen this too, specifically with people trying to buy Detroit Lions tickets.

“People trying to buy tickets and it’s somebody’s Facebook account that’s been hacked, and then the hacked Facebook account is saying they got four tickets for sale or six tickets for $1,000 or $1,200,” he said. “They don’t find out until after they’ve already paid.”

Breuckman said common scams his office has been seeing target older people by stating that they owe money to the Internal Revenue Service. The scam artists convince their victims to pay through bitcoin or financial cards so they can’t be traced.

Breuckman also said there have been issues with people stealing delivery packages.

“People somehow or some way, they’re finding out deliveries of iPhone products and different stuff like that, and people are pretty much waiting to come steal them off the porch as soon as they get delivered,” he said. “They know where they’re going somehow or another. That’s been a scam in the last, like, two weeks that’s been going on.”

On the subject of package delivery, Ferndale Police Chief Dennis Emmi said people should take measures to make sure that porch pirates don’t have easy access to the delivered goods. He suggested networking with neighbors or installing doorbell cameras and other security cameras to help, or having packages delivered to one’s place of work.

“There’s a lot of things you can do as we enter the holiday season, but if you do find yourself a victim of package theft or the victim of a porch pirate, make sure you report it to the police department so we can follow up on it,” he said. “There may be an opportunity for us to actually catch the offenders, because they’re not just doing it to one person, they’re doing it to several. So it’ll help us track these incidents and maybe help us build a case and hopefully lead to an arrest.”

Emmi said fraudulent charities can pop up during the holiday to take advantage of people in the giving spirit.

“Just make sure that you vet the source,” he said. “If someone is reaching out to you, this could be a flag. I would be the one to initiate it if you do truly want to donate to a worthy cause. As a donor, I would initiate that contact and not go with a blind text or blind email. A lot of these emails, they look very similar to the official email of a charity, and they can be just a little bit off and you’re donating to a scam or a criminal.”

Dowgiallo also has seen scams where people have received calls from a number that showed it was a bank or credit union calling, but then the callers use scare tactics to get personal information.

“The member thinks that they’re talking to the credit union, and they think it’s a trusted source, and they start giving away all the information, and then just giving it to the scammer,” he said. “That turns into the scammer going in and taking over an account through an online account takeover, or they’ll just end up giving their debit card information and then they just start making a fake debit card or they potentially could try to use an Apple wallet or Android wallet to create a card on their phone. And then they start using their card and money without their knowledge.”

Dowgiallo’s biggest recommendation is that people set up alerts with their financial institution to notify them if someone is logging into their account or if there is a transaction with their card.

“If you have those alerts, and you’re a little bit more on top of your account, you’re going to quickly know when something’s not right,” he said. “Have those alerts in place so that when you feel confident or you think that maybe you clicked on something that you weren’t sure of, that you’re at least in the know on your accounts at all times.”

“No financial institution, including Genisys, will ever ask for your personal information,” he added. “They have that information, but we try to educate our members all the time. You know, you send these one-time codes, and it’ll say do not give this out, and Genisys would never ask for this information, but even if you think it’s a trusted source, just know that they shouldn’t be asking for that. They should have that information and to never give it out to anybody.”

Breuckman stated people need to be diligent and double check what they think they know.

“Don’t just immediately trust everybody,” he said. “You have to actually do your own diligence and figure out if you feel like something isn’t right, it probably isn’t. Never be ashamed to actually ask another person if they think it’s OK or not before you buy something.”

Emmi stated that many of these crimes go unreported, and that’s the message he wants to send people: They need to report to police when these thefts or frauds occur. Many of the culprits reside outside the United States.

“So they originate from outside the country or from another side of the country, and really it’s near impossible to track down the suspects in a lot of these cases, but if you report it, at least we can share the means in which they are committing their crimes, and maybe we could … through (public service announcements), we can inform the residents to what to look for going forward,” he said.