BEND, OR — Scammers bilked thousands from two Bend restaurants in the past week and police say more could be targeted. Staff at Bangers & Brews used a thousand dollars to purchase gift cards on December 28, believing they were helping to release the owner from U.S. Marshals custody. They sent another thousand from a personal account through a banking app. January fourth, a Shari’s employee fell for a similar con, using more than $3,000 from the till to buy gift cards to allegedly clear an IRS audit.
“These are sophisticated crimes,” Bend PD’s Sheila Miller tells KBND News. In both cases, the caller’s phone number was spoofed to look like the business owner or manager. It’s a new twist on a well-known scam, “Being able to spoof the owner of the business or the regional manager’s phone number and having some of that information about the business, it is a little bit off-putting. So, all of these things kind of combine to make it a bit more of a sophisticated con.”
Miller says these kinds of investigations are difficult because the scammers are often outside the country, “In the first case, the Bangers & Brews case, the scammer was able to get $1,000 from the employee’s personal bank account through an online app. We may be able to track that using the information they provided for that app. And then in the other one, they mailed these gift cards to an address. Perhaps we will be able to track that address.”
It’s easy to think you won’t fall for the…
