City of St. Marys Police Department 

The Saint Marys City Police Department would like to inform our citizens of an ongoing, and increasingly problematic scam occurring throughout our community. There has been a noted increase of scams occurring when victims are contacted by people representing themselves as members of a Fraud Detection Division of whatever bank the victim uses. The scammers are even capable of making the phone number look like an actual call from the phone number located on the back their debit card.

The scammers will report there has been fraudulent activity observed on the victim’s bank account, and convince the victim to access their bank account through their phone or computer. The scammers will ask victims for passwords and logins to bank accounts, or in several instances have the victim download an app on their phone, which in turns allows the scammer to view the victim’s phone. As the victim logs into their bank accounts, the scammer can view passwords and logins.

Unfortunately, these scams are becoming increasingly complex, and can be very convincing. If money is stolen the complexity of wire transfers, 3rd party apps, and internet services makes it all but impossible to recover the stolen money.

If you receive such a call, or text message, we are encouraging citizens to ask for a call back number, hang up, and call your local bank to validate the call.