Maine Attorney General Issues Warning on Debt Collection Scam

Maine Attorney General Janet T. Mills reported Friday that her Office has received many recent reports of aggressive calls from scammers demanding immediate payments on supposed debts. The common thread among the scammers is that they attempt to get you to make a payment by wire transfer or pre-paid debit card.

Mills warned that Mainers should be very suspicious of anyone calling out of the blue and demanding an immediate payment of a debt, especially if they require that payment by any reloadable cash cards such as Green Dot Money Pak or a wire service like Western Union.

“The names and the details of the scams vary,” Attorney General Mills said. “Typically the caller pretends they are from a business that you know and are attempting to collect an old debt. Perhaps they say you have won a lottery. Sometimes they even claim to be from the state or federal government. The caller has just enough information about you that you believe they are legitimate. The red flag, however, is that they want you to make an instant payment with a pre-paid debit card or wire transfer. This is how you know you are getting scammed. Hang up the phone immediately.”

Mills said that in this information age, scammers can glean a lot of information about a person from the Internet. They may also have coupled that information with private personal or financial data from an illegal data breach. The result is that the scammer can be very convincing when they call you out of the blue and catch you off guard.

“No legitimate business, governmental entity, or genuine debt collection agency is going to call you without having first sent you mail. They will not demand an immediate payment. They will not require that you wire cash or use a pre-paid debit card service, and they will not threaten you with arrest if you do not comply,” said Attorney General Mills. “These are all the red flags of a scam artist.”