BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK\/KBFX) \u2014 Bakersfield police are warning residents about a scam in which callers posing as banks or government agencies pressure victims to withdraw cash and hand it over to a \u201ccourier\u201d at the victim’s home or by arranging a meeting.<\/p>\n
The Bakersfield Police Department has received several reports of a recent scam that involves the use of a courier to steal money from innocent victims.<\/p>\n
BPD is issuing this advisory to bring awareness to this illicit activity.<\/p>\n
Police said with this scam, the victim receives a phone call claiming to be from a bank\u2019s fraud department or another government agency, telling the victim their money is at risk.<\/p>\n
The scammer convinces the victim that the bank is requesting they withdraw their money in order to keep it \u201csafe\u201d while the bank is conducting an internal investigation. The victim is then instructed to withdraw money and hand it over to a \u2018courier\u2019 for safekeeping until the bank concludes an investigation.<\/p>\n
The courier comes directly to the victim\u2019s home or arranges a meeting to collect the money.<\/p>\n
BPD is asking community members to take these steps to protect yourself from such a scam:<\/p>\n
Hang up if the call is suspicious.Never give out personal information, never confirm personal information or provide any account information when you did not originate the call.If you receive a call from someone who says they represent a company or government agency, hang up and call the phone number on your account statement, or on the organization\u2019s website. Do not use your phone\u2019s recent call log to call back the same phone number to verify if it is a scam or not.Never withdraw cash at the direction of an unsolicited caller.<\/p>\n
If you have fallen victim to the scam, call BPD at 327-7111 to file a report.<\/p>\n
Should you receive one of these phone calls, report the call to the Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (382-4357).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK\/KBFX) \u2014 Bakersfield police are warning residents about a scam in which callers posing as banks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-450559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}