PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 There is no shortage of scams in your email inbox, but one that\u2019s appeared in Philadelphia in the last several months targets professionals with business before public agencies.<\/p>\n
Scammers often pose as public agencies like the IRS and toll collectors. They\u2019re entities the general public deals with, so the schemes can be blasted to anyone in hopes of finding the gullible. But targeting people requesting zoning changes or building permit approvals \u2014 that is a fairly select and savvy audience.<\/p>\n
Jerry Roller, the founding principal of JKRP Architects, was preparing to present to the Historical Commission about a commercial development on Walnut Street, when he got a letter demanding a payment for the hearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seemed odd. We\u2019ve done a number of projects that go through the Historical Commission and never had a payment. It\u2019s all part of the building permit,\u201d Roller said.<\/p>\n
Roller didn\u2019t pay. He learned pretty quickly that this was a scam focusing on zoning and planning agencies. That means the scammers are targeting lawyers and other professionals who make a living going before those agencies. <\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t appear anyone locally has actually paid, but the Historical Commission and Zoning Board of Adjustment have sent warning letters to everyone with business coming before them, so it\u2019s unlikely to work in the future.<\/p>\n
Complaints have come in as recently as last month. Other jurisdictions have reported the problem too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, they\u2019re obviously reading the agenda; it\u2019s a public agenda for what\u2019s been filed and then, I guess, get the contact information and send this out. I mean, it is strange,\u201d Roller said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 There is no shortage of scams in your email inbox, but one that\u2019s appeared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,663,100005,55690],"class_list":["post-289207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-scam","tag-scammers","tag-zoning-board"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289207","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=289207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}