In recent days, the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s Office has received two calls from citizens reporting an attempted credit card scam via text messages.
One complainant received a text message requesting that he call the phone number to give his social security number and bank card number. Another complainant received a text message as an alert that his bank card was deactivated and requested that he call the phone number. When the number was called, a voice recoding answered telling the caller to enter his bank card number. The call back number was the same in both incidents, 985-722-____.
Both incidents were very suspicious. In both of these incidents, neither party surrendered the personal information requested, but they thought it was important to report the suspicious activity to law enforcement and to alert as many people as possible about the potential scam.
Banks will never contact customers by phone or text messages requesting personal information such as social security numbers and account numbers. Please be vigilant to such activity, so you won’t be scammed.