Scammers ‘Play’ with local officials’ emails

On Jan. 9, two members of The Sun-Gazette staff received emails from county elected officials indicating suspicion of fraud. One individual serves on the Tulare County Board of

Education while the other, Terry Sayer, serves on Tulare’s City Council. One scam involved asking the email recipient to purchase Google Play store gift cards, while the other

involved inquiring about the recipient’s Amazon account. Fortunately, both hacked emails were detected and taken care of without apparent negative consequences. According to the

Tulare County Sheriff’s Department public information office, this type of Google Play gift card scam is one they have not seen or had reports of. Typically, more common scams in

the area are those involving individuals who impersonate law enforcement via phone or email. According to Ashley Schwarm with the sheriff’s office, the impersonators will

“claim the victim needs to pay some sort of fine to avoid jail time.”  However, according to Clayton Alexander, communications specialist with the Better Business Bureau (BBB)

in Fresno, scams involving gift cards have become increasingly more popular.  “It’s unfortunate, but a lot of scammers will use these sorts of tactics,” Alexander said.

“One of the issues with things like Google Play gift card [scams], or pretty much any type of gift card [scam] is that they’re relatively untraceable, which is why [the

hackers] favor them so much.”