Bike theft and burglary can serve as top crimes in the campus community. But lately the Eugene Police Department warns that more sinister behaviors are taking place — and it’s almost impossible to catch their perpetrators: fraud and scams.
Fraudulent crimes don’t just affect its victim in one medium, as the EPD cites over a dozen types of fraud in a document on its website.
Some examples are stolen debit cards, pyramid schemes, impersonating people through online dating and home improvement scams.
According to EPD’s Crime Prevention Specialist Tod Schneider, students looking for housing or jobs online tend to be easy targets.
Schneider recalls that in one case, a student looking for housing started communicating with someone who had posted a fake ad. Using images from another post on Craigslist, the scammer was able to access the victim’s personal information through the rental agreement and make off with the house’s down payment.
The scammer also attained keys to the home and gave the student a showing before skipping out of town and cutting off communication.
It can be great deals offered at ridiculously low prices that people are lured into scams. But if it seems too good to be true — it probably is.
“We all like to be in a windfall,” said Schneider. “You’re always better off if you can find someone to bounce things off of before giving away money or information.”
But sometimes the scammers are halfway around the world, which is often true for crimes where card information is stolen and then sold on the internet.
Over the last summer, sophomore international studies major Jennifer Eyler, along with several members of her sorority chapter Kappa Alpha Theta, had their debit card information compromised.
“I was away at summer camp, and my mom told me she received an email from Chase saying that I had made three purchases in Moscow, Russia,” said Eyler.
That’s when catching the scammer gets tricky, said EPD Detective Steve Williams.
“Most of the scam reports that come in are through online and overseas (transactions). We can’t investigate them. The most we can do is notify the FBI or get the victim to file a report, but it’s kind of a black hole,” said Williams.
And when it’s not conducted over the internet, scams are enabled through the kindness of other people.
“(Scams are) designed to get at your emotions — to get you either excited or distraught. When you get someone emotional, you can convince them to do things that are illogical,” said Schneider.
Detective Williams noted that sometimes scammers roam streets like 13th Avenue looking for people to cash fraudulent checks. The victim will be asked to pull money from her own bank account in exchange for a check that will eventually bounce. Scammers typically offer some excuse of needing fast cash in order to alleviate some sort of personal emergency.
Williams recommends making a photocopy of your wallet’s contents periodically. If it ever gets stolen, the copies will help with canceling cards.