BERKS COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 It\u2019s a warning for homeowners in Berks County.<\/p>\n
Police in Robeson Township say suspicious crews were recently reported in the Birdsboro area. They may show up in plain pickup trucks and sometimes with out-of-state plates.<\/p>\n
Investigators say these scams are common this time of year when people are thinking about home repairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve found whenever somebody just shows up at your house, saying that they’re in the area or telling you that they have leftover supplies, we found it’s normally a scam,\u201d said Trooper Ethan Brownback of Pennsylvania State Police.<\/p>\n
That \u201cleftover materials\u201d pitch is one of the biggest red flags.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will try to get you outside of your home somewhere while the other one then is inside of your residence, stealing your belongings. They will communicate with each other \u2014 radio, walkie-talkie. They’ll have different code words,\u201d Brownback said.<\/p>\n
And the numbers show why. The FBI says in 2024, people over 60 lost nearly $5 billion to scams nationwide. Here in Pennsylvania, the FBI says older adults reported more than $151 million in losses in 2024.<\/p>\n
Troopers say they have seen this connected to paving, roofing, painting, tree work and more. They say older adults are often targeted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think maybe a lot of times they’re more trustworthy than the younger person might be,\u201d Brownback said.<\/p>\n
The Pennsylvania Attorney General\u2019s Office also warns homeowners to verify contractors, get written contracts and never feel pressured into paying on the spot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they are there and you can get a picture of them or of the license plate of their vehicle, that would be very advantageous for us to have for law enforcement,\u201d Brownback said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERKS COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 It\u2019s a warning for homeowners in Berks County. Police in Robeson Township say suspicious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,10716,6685,128,130,129,663],"class_list":["post-178948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-fraud","tag-homeowners","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-scam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}