Suzie Romig/Steamboat Pilot & Today
Steamboat Springs Police Department Sergeant Sam Silva’s best advice is “do not click, hang up, delete and block.”
That’s because any technology platform connected to the internet can be a haven for scammers who want to take advantage of unaware individuals, whether it is a dating website or a local Facebook group. Online scams have “increased substantially since COVID happened,” Silva said.
If Yampa Valley residents reported all potential internet or cell-phone based scam attempts, law enforcement would be inundated with thousands of situations, Silva said. Since the vast majority of scammers originate from outside of the country, law enforcement personnel have little recourse, he said.
“We won’t open the case and investigate if there is not a loss,” Silva said. “Just because you get one (communication) and you realized it’s a scam, we are not going to take a report on that because it’s so common.”
With advances in scammer technology and the pandemic prompted high internet use, fraud schemes have flourished.
According to a report by the AARP BankSafe Initiative, since the start of the COVID-19…
