{"id":121142,"date":"2026-01-16T22:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/121142\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T22:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:03:07","slug":"cape-coral-residents-warned-of-fake-invoice-scam-targeting-locals-wink-smart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/121142\/","title":{"rendered":"Cape Coral residents warned of fake invoice scam targeting locals | WINK Smart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CAPE CORAL &#8211; Watch out for fake invoices popping up in Cape Coral.<\/p>\n<p>Cape police are warning residents <a href=\"https:\/\/myfloridacfo.com\/division\/consumers\/fraudscams\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">about scams involving fake invoices<\/a> demanding wire payments to the city.<\/p>\n<p>These invoices often come from a <a href=\"http:\/\/USA.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">USA.com<\/a> email and look official with a city seal, but they&#8217;re not real. If you wire the funds, they&#8217;re likely gone.<\/p>\n<p>Trisha Simonsen, who is visiting the area, shared her approach to handling such situations.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think what I probably do is probably contact friends and family to see if they got the same type of email, second, just go directly with the source, the police, give them a call to see if this is legitimate or not,&#8221; said Simonsen.<\/p>\n<p>Cape Coral officials emphasize they never request payments via wire transfer or third-party apps like PayPal, Venmo or Zelle. They suggest bringing any suspicious invoices to the city office for verification.<\/p>\n<p>To protect yourself, check the email address, question any wire or gift card payment requests, know what the invoice is for and ensure there&#8217;s contact information available.<\/p>\n<p>Be skeptical, slow down, and <a href=\"https:\/\/consumer.ftc.gov\/articles\/how-recognize-avoid-phishing-scams\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">do your research<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CORAL &#8211; Watch out for fake invoices popping up in Cape Coral. Cape police are warning residents&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,3837,1917,325,115],"class_list":{"0":"post-121142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cape-coral","8":"tag-cape-coral","9":"tag-cape-coral-headlines","10":"tag-cape-coral-news","11":"tag-collaborator_gen_stories","12":"tag-consumer","13":"tag-lee","14":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}