ROBERTSON COUNTY, Texas (KRHD) — Robertson County Sheriff Bill Ruland shares tips to combat a recent spike in text scams.
- Number one: if something sounds odd or unusual, don't engage.
- Number two: if you happen to receive a scam text, report it immediately.
- The most common scam texts in Robertson County are the toll road payments, Visa fraud, and people claiming to work for the sheriff's office requesting money.
Watch the video to see how to protect yourself:
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
"I get like stuff that's like, this is the USPS saying like, you're missing a package or whatever and it's like, no, man, I know what I bought," Waco resident, Will Brewer said.
Scam texts are now an ongoing issue in Robertson County.
"It's very prevalent in our society, that the social media, on the phone, text messages, there's just so many of those out there, and it's very hard to detect sometimes," Robertson County Sheriff, Bill Ruland said.
Leaving our neighbors both frustrated and concerned.
"Just last night I had something come on my phone that said my phone had been hacked into, and it actually had the Apple logo that it used," Waco resident, Amy Gibson said.
"There's some that have definitely, I've had to like think about like, oh wait, that's not, you know, that doesn't make any sense," Waco resident, Ansley Gibson said.
The Robertson County Sheriff, Bill Ruland, tells15ABC these scams could lead to bigger problems if not handled properly.
"Basically you're going to input everything as far as your personal information and credit card numbers and all those things in there unknowingly, and they're going to take your money out of the bank."
So he shared some tips to make sure our neighbors don't become the next victims.
Number one: If something sounds odd or unusual, don't engage.
"I learned once that there was, I thought I was going to get a free gift from Jennifer Garner," Gibson said.
And number two: If you receive a scam text, report it immediately.
"Don't just like put in your credit card number, that's crazy. Why would you do that? Silly," Brewer said.
Ruland says these are the current solutions, but hopes we'll find even better ones in the future.
"There's really just not a whole lot we can do about it, other than document it," he said.
"I wish we could have better technology to catch them. Unfortunately, we just haven't caught up to it yet."
