How to Avoid the Scam That Nearly Tricked a Missouri Deputy

As technology advances, scams are becoming more sophisticated where even law enforcement can sometimes be duped. That happened recently when a Missouri deputy nearly fell for a text scam that looked like a real service offered by his bank.

This was just shared a few days ago by the Clay County, Missouri Sheriff's Office. It's a text one of their deputies received that mirrored a service he had signed up for through his real bank.

In case you can't see the small print on their social media share, here's a snippet of what they said about this devious scheme:

"One of our deputies said even he thought this scam was real at first. He had signed up for fraud alert text messages from his bank, and this looked like a legitimate one he had gotten before. But when a representative said they would call him, he got suspicious because that had never happened...When our deputy contacted his bank directly, he learned this was, indeed, a scam text."

This Missouri deputy did the right thing and it's how you can avoid this scam, too. If you receive a text that appears to come from a business you really do work with, DO NOT CLICK ANY LINKS IN THE TEXT. Contact your bank or whatever business that the text claims to represent and verify it through a proven safe contact method such as a public phone number that's verifiable. As many mentioned in the comments of the Clay County, Missouri Sheriff's Office share, artificial intelligence is being used by villains to make these schemes seem to be even more believable. Some can even spoof your phone into believing it really did originate from a law enforcement office or financial institution. You can never be too careful.