Houston Police Chief Tim Ceplina warns area residents to beware of scam phone calls from people who demand money and issue threats.
Ceplina said his department has received several reports from people who have received illegitimate calls from people supposedly representing the IRS, organizations such as the “Federal Internet Fraud Task Force” and several other non-existent corporations.
“They’re trying scam people out of their personal information,” he said. “We strongly recommend that people never give out personal information over the telephone.”
Ceplina said even if people refuse to share their information, they might continue to receive calls.
“Ignore them,” he said. “Don’t speak to them and don’t even answer the call if you start to recognize numbers.”
Ceplina said it’s a good idea to report such calls to the HPD.
“We’ll then try to make the information available to the attorney general’s office, which might be able to do more with it than we can,” he said. “Our biggest goal in this is to protect our people from these scams, because they’re getting targeted left and right.”
Ceplina said the HPD has recently received close to 10 reports of suspected scam calls.
“There are probably four times that many who haven’t reported it,” he said.
Scammers typically prey on people’s ignorance.
“The IRS will never, ever call you saying you owe them money,” Ceplina said, “and no one is ever going to call someone and say, ‘if you don’t give give us money, there will be a warrant issued for your arrest.’ That just doesn’t happen.
“It’s a coordinated effort by these scammers, and we really want to caution people not to get sucked into it.”
Ceplina also said area resident might receive a call from a legitimate, Texas-based organization selling T-shirts with regard to a “don’t text and drive” campaign.
“I know a lot of local businesses have gotten calls from them, and that’s legitimate,” he said. “But these days it’s hard to tell the legitimate from the illegitimate, so if anybody has a concern about a call like that, I encourage them to call us. That way we can verify the legitimacy or turn the other way.”
The HPD’s phone number is 417-967-3348.