FAIRMONT - The Fairmont Police Department is warning of a phone scam that has hit the area in the past week.
Police Chief Greg Brolsma said the scam is effective and "very serious."
"What's so different about this one is they're preying on people's personal lives," he said. "We don't really know how many people have been contacted in the community."
According to the police department Web site, a scammer calls someone who is a grandparent and says their grandchild has either been injured in a car accident or jailed in Canada and needs money. When the grandparent notices the voice doesn't sound the same, the scammer says they have a cold or stresses they were just in an accident. The scam artist knows the name of the grandchild, and asks the person to go to the nearest Wal-Mart to send a money order ranging from $3,000 to $12,000.
"What the victim may not know is that a Money Gram can be picked up anywhere in the world, no matter what location the sender writes on the receipt," the release states.
Brolsma said police just had an incident this week in which a grandmother called her granddaughter asking how to send a Money Gram. The woman was en route from Armstrong, Iowa, to the Fairmont Wal-Mart to try and send several thousand dollars to Canada when her granddaughter called the Fairmont Police Department.
Brolsma said there have been four reported cases, one in which someone had already sent $12,000.
"This one is kind of effective," he said. "Almost every week people report to us something that seems suspicious. Most of the public has become quite efficient at picking them out."
Brolsma added that scam artists keep coming up with new twists, and this one seems to have worked.
"They are doing some research and finding out personal information," he said.
Brolsma said people should work with their local banks, as well as police departments, when they have concerns. Brolsma encourages people to go to www.fairmontpolice.org and sign up for alerts.
"The bottom line - if you're getting e-mails, mailings or phone calls from unsolicited businesses asking you for personal account information, bank account numbers, or telling you they'll send you a check and you send a check back to them, be extremely cautious. We have increased fraud attempts on our citizenry because of the communication-rich world we live in now."
Brolsma said his department is organizing a community presentation regarding scams.
"So that residents can come and see various samples of these and then a discussion about what types of fraud attempts are commonly seen, and what some things are they can do to protect themselves from falling victim to them," he said.
Brolsma said that in these kinds of fraud cases, it's highly difficult to get the money back or press charges since the scammers can be anywhere in the world. He also said the cases also take a lot of time and effort.