Utilities stress ending the call to combat fraud on Utility Scam Awareness Day
Utilities United Against Scams (UUAS) on Nov. 17 marked the sixth annual Utility Scam Awareness Day with the motto: “End the Call. End the Scam,” as it and providers across the country work to combat rising scam attempts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
UUAS, a consortium of nearly 150 U.S. and Canadian electric, water, and natural gas utilities and their trade associations, has been battling scammers since it formed in 2016. Utility Scam Awareness Day occurs during International Fraud Awareness Week, which runs through Nov. 20, which is a week-long campaign that encourages businesses to promote anti-fraud awareness and education.
UUAS has taken down nearly 12,000 toll-free numbers used by scammers and promoted awareness among both consumers and utilities, but the work is never done. Technology evolves, and, according to UUAS Executive Director Monica Martinez, so too do the scammers.
“As we saw during the pandemic, residential households were heavily targeted because so many businesses were closed,” Martinez told Daily Energy Insider. “There was a shift toward the residential sector. They’re going back now and continuing to prey on the small business side. A small business uses more electricity, more energy, than a household. A scammer can find it more lucrative to go after them.”
Duke Energy, for example, has logged more than 97,000 reports of attempted scams among its customers since mid-2015, according to Jared Lawrence, UUAS founder and Duke Energy vice president of Metering Services and Customer Service Transformation, during a recent Electric Perspectives podcast hosted by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI). And 2020 alone brought nearly 30,000 scam attempts, with $145,000 in losses experienced since July.
“The scammers are really good about timing these calls, particularly when they’re targeting businesses, to times that would be exceptionally disruptive to their operations if they were to suffer a disruption of their energy service, and so they will often call a restaurant right at the lunch peak, a dry cleaner at the end of the day when they have a lot of customers coming in during rush hour to pick things up,” Lawrence said. “This is the kind of tactic: trying to find the time the victim is under the most pressure, and will therefore react.”
Prepaid cards have seen a rise in use, even though utilities would never encourage paying bills with a prepaid card or cryptocurrency. Some scammers have even gone so far as to walk customers through the means of setting up accounts to pay them. It may seem out of character for utilities, but scammers can be quite persuasive, especially in a time of heightened anxiety, and they adapt accordingly.
“We’ve also really started to see new technology,” Martinez said. “We’re doing more online banking, we’ve made adjustments because of the pandemic. Scammers are using third party mobile applications to do their bad deeds. They’ve used Zelle, a banking app; Cash App. They’ve used mobile applications to actually get money and ‘no shut off’ payments from our customers.”
The utilities industry is working with federal partners like the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to get fraud prevention information to consumers. While it can be difficult to directly punish scammers, with many operating out of the country, they can make it more difficult for them to operate through shutting down phone lines they utilize. In the case of the FCC, fines have been levied on some individuals for helping to carry robocalling traffic.
Lawrence noted that Duke Energy has seen falling deception rates for years, to around 4.5 percent. The number of scam attempts continues to rise, but the number of scams that actually worked has fallen. However, since some utilities have reinstituted electricity disconnections for nonpayment, Duke Energy has seen an increase in the deception rate to 6.1 percent among its customers, though Lawrence argued the actual figure could be lower, as more customers know utilities are actively pursuing scams and may simply not be calling incidents in.
Still, the ongoing financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to scammers increasing calls, texts, emails, and even in-person tactics to demand immediate payment for utility service, usually with threats of service disconnection. Potential scams have included threats to disconnect for alleged past due bills followed by requests for immediate payment through prepaid debit cards, or conversely, promises of refunds or rebates from utilities that have supposedly overcharged.
Hawaiian Electric noted recently that scammers have gone so far as to hit real estate agents to act as a go-between with their clients and add legitimacy to their scam attempts, before asking for a wire transfer to avert a disconnection. The company does not request “wire transfers, prepaid debit cards, gift cards or bitcoin to pay bills,” according to a statement. Even its emails have been used against customers, with names of actual Hawaiian Electric employees used to say that electronic banking information had changed.
Martinez stressed that utilities have done a good job raising awareness and emphasized that their customers need to contact them if scams have occurred.
In line with the latest UUAS campaign, though, the big point being pushed this year is: just stop. People can be rushed during the holiday season with good reason, Martinez noted. But that’s no excuse to drop one’s guard.
“People are hesitant to simply hang up,” Martinez said. “They might be too polite. If it doesn’t seem right or it doesn’t feel right, just go to that number on your utility bill. Someone trying to get you to transfer money online? Stop, take the pause, end the call. Getting that message through is really critical.”
Dominion Energy, which operates in 16 states, echoed those points, urging customers to slow down, stop and resist immediate payment calls, hang up even if a call looks like it’s coming from Dominion (IDs can be spoofed), and verify scammers’ claims by checking with the number on a local energy bill, signing into Dominion’s official app or through the utility’s website.
“An immediate red flag is when someone calls you claiming to be a utility representative and threatens to disconnect your service if you don’t make an immediate payment over the phone,” Utibe Bassey, Dominion Energy’s vice president of customer experience, said in a statement. “That’s a telltale sign of a scam because we don’t use scare tactics, and we never demand immediate payment over the phone. The best way to protect yourself is to know what a scam sounds like and what to do if you’re targeted.”
