Suspicious emails, phone calls and Facebook messages — scammers reach through all resources to find victims everywhere, including Southeast Alaska.

According to Police Chief Gene Meek, there are more scams going around, and one this summer claimed as its victim someone who is moving to Wrangell from California.

Newly hired special education teacher May Evelyn Catingub was seeking to find a place to rent and was contacted by an individual offering a property. The problem was that the property didn’t exist and the fraudster isn’t a part of the community.

“What happened was, the scammer went through a real estate site (Zillow) and contacted the victim and offered details about the fake property and requested a rental application fee,” Meek said. “Because the victim isn’t from the area and is not familiar with how things work here, they paid $130 that was requested, and of course it was fake and they didn’t get anything for that.”

He said people need to be aware that there is no policing of Facebook or other such sites, and it is easy for scams to be run there.

“All that any of them have to do is go to different community pages, which they can access from anywhere in the world, and they can find people who are looking for help,” the chief said. 

“In this particular case, I took the complaint and had to pass it on up the chain because it’s involving multiple states. That makes it a federal case now.”

He said the identity of the scammer has not been discovered and it is likely that the identity used on social media is an alias.

“Everyone needs to remember that Facebook is not designed to protect you. It always helps to double check who and what you’re dealing with.”

Another recent scam, he said, is fake FBI notifications demanding payment of fines at around $2,000. Although none of those have been successfully perpetrated locally, Meek said it is becoming more prevalent.

“First of all, no governmental agency — FBI, IRS, Social Security or any others — will contact you by phone or email. And they definitely won’t demand direct payment,” Meek said. “If you ever receive anything like that, you should report it immediately.”

In addition to the obvious communications discrepancy, he said many of the scams involve demands to make payment through Bitcoin, which has been occurring more regularly.

“If someone gets contacted with one of these scams, they need to recognize that the whole point of what the scammers are doing is to scare and intimidate,” Meek said.

“They think that if they can scare you, they can get you to act quickly. If you ever have any doubts about some kind of correspondence like that, you should contact law enforcement.” The business line for Wrangell police is 907-874-3304.

“If it involves anything to do with banking, you can also contact your bank and they can tell you whether or not it’s legitimate,” the chief said, adding, “it is almost always not legitimate.”