COMMUNITY LIVING
Send Stratford news to: [email protected] phone: 715-223-2342 fax: 715-223-3505 P.O. Box 677 103 West Spruce Street Abbotsford, WI 54405 MAREA meets
Members of the Marshfield Area Retired Educators (MAREA) met on June 20.
The meeting began with a speaker, detective Rockley Gross, a 17-year member of the Marshfield Police Department who is a father of five children and a native of Eau Claire, who was introduced to speak on the topic of scams.
Gross began by stating if something sounds too good to be true it is a scam, with the scammer playing on the victims emotions. He defined fraud as criminal deception for financial gain. There was 45.8 billion dollars scammed in 2020-2021 in the U.S. Of this, he said $48 million was scammed from Wisconsin victims. This number increased during the pandemic.
Gross said any time money is involved it is important to report it to the authorities, tell others and don’t be embarrassed because it happens to so many and by talking about what happened, others can be alerted.
Examples of scams include tech support services, robo calls, lottery and sweepstakes fraud, posing as government employees such as IRS, medicare etc, email scams, tax filing, ATM fraud, gift card scams, romance scams and the latest is door-to-door scamming. The dollar amount of the average scam is $340.
Gross provided tips on protecting yourself against scammers to include awareness of financial statements, never sending…