Florida SNAP recipients will not get benefits for November, pending federal funds <\/a><\/p>\nChannel 8 spoke to another business owner who says scams are becoming more commonplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get cold calls all day long, we get text messages and emails,\u201d said John Brooks Murray, owner of Baywaters Apartments.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone knows each other, so we watch out for each other,\u201d Murray said.<\/p>\n
He said they try as hard as they can to stay on top of it by staying connected, but he was unaware of another scheme posing as the city to target homeowners and business owners trying to expand or build on their property.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the extent that we see this remaining an ongoing issue, we\u2019ll continue to monitor and inform the public through our different communication channels,\u201d said Marc Portugal with the City of St. Pete Beach.<\/p>\n
City officials said the imposters were able to track down people who recently submitted zoning or planning permits, and they sent them messages asking for hundreds or thousands of dollars for an approval fee.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t surprise me that the scammers are latching onto this,\u201d Murray said. \u201cI mean they look for vulnerable areas and they take advantage of people who are desperate. There are a lot of desperate people out here on the barrier islands.\u201d<\/p>\n
The people who received them had a feeling something was up and reported it, but city leaders are warning the public because many of the emails appeared to have legitimate and specific information related to these people\u2019s properties.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo to them it seemed like a realistic amount of money,\u201d Portugal said. \u201cIf people are concerned about the legitimacy of a communication from the city \u2013 they should definitely call planning and zoning department and find out whether or not the request is legitimate.\u201d<\/p>\n
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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. (WFLA) \u2014 The City of St. Pete Beach is warning residents of a scheme…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[16409,16411,16410,202,2149,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-20378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-business-owner","tag-business-owners","tag-john-brooks-murray","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-beach","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20378","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=20378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}