Utility Scam Awareness Day to educate customers on fraudster tactics

Utilities United Against Scams (UUAS) has named Nov. 20 as Utility Scam Awareness Day – a day for advocacy and education regarding the tactics used by scammers seeking to spook payments out of customers.

“Utilities United Against Scams wants to stress that anyone from small business owner to senior citizen can fall victim to a utility impostor scam, in fact roughly 60 percent of scams reported to our members are from business customers,” Monica Martinez, UUAS Executive Director and a former Michigan Public Service Commission regulator, said. “Education is the best way to stop these fraudulent scams.”

Scammers use a variety of ways to get at their victims. From calls, to texts, to e-mails, they use every modern means of communication at their disposal, but the intensity in which they operate can be a sure sign of what they seek, according to UUAS. Utilities, they point out, will never rely on a single notification to a customer within one hour of a service interruption and never seek payments through pre-paid debit cards, gift cards or cryptocurrency.

“While our Utilities United Against Scams consortium has made significant progress during our four years of work to educate and protect customers, the criminals targeting our communities continuously adapt and occasionally fool even the most sophisticated customers,” said Jared Lawrence, vice president of customer operations at Duke Energy and founder and executive committee chair of UUAS.

More than 37,500 Duke Energy customers have reported scam attempts since the company began tracking reports in June 2015. About 6 to 7 percent of those customers fell victim to the scams, losing a total of nearly $2 million.

From January through September 2019, more than 10,000 Duke Energy customers reported receiving a scam attempt, the company said. Of those, about 5.5 percent paid the scammers, totaling nearly $316,000 in losses.

To date, the UUAS – which consists of more than 140 U.S. and Canadian electric, water and natural gas utilities, as well as their trade associations – said it has helped end operations by approximately 5,000 toll-free numbers used by scammers.

In an effort to continue further progress, UUAS asks customers who suspect they have been victims of fraud or felt threatened by scammers to contact their local utilities or law enforcement.