Scam artists working the phone lines

WASILLA — Matanuska Electric Association is warning people about a recent scam primarily targeting the cooperative’s business members.

MEA spokeswoman Julie Estey said on Monday that there have been several reports of scammers calling businesses and demanding payment and providing a 1-800 number for victims to call to make credit card payments. Estey said the scammers appear to be using a brute force method of cold-calling as many local businesses as possible.

“They’re pretty easy to target because everyone knows we serve this entire area,” Estey said.

The recent scam has focused mainly on Peters Creek and Eagle River, though Estey said some calls have been reported to Palmer and Wasilla members.

“Usually they call and say they are overdue on their balance and they need to pay or they’re going to be disconnected,” she said.

Estey said the cooperative will call businesses that are late with payments, but typically urges them to then call MEA back at the cooperative’s verified phone number.

Calling back is the best way to ensure members are actually talking to an MEA representative, and Estey urged anyone who gets a call asking for payment to call back immediately.

She said MEA representatives will not ask members to call an 800 number and will not accept credit card numbers directly from members. Instead, callers are asked to either pay online at www.mea.coop or call the cooperative’s Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system at 888-478-6714.

Estey said the cooperative’s members are frequent targets for a variety of attempted phone scams.

“We’ve been getting a lot of calls,” she said.

The con artists are constantly coming up with new ways to try to defraud MEA members through new scams.

“They take on various forms,” she said.

Estey said anyone who thinks they might be the victim of a scam to call the cooperatives at 761-9300 in the Mat-Su or at 689-9300 in the Eagle River area.

“The best and safest thing is to just hang up and calls us back,” she said.

Contact Frontiersman editor Matt Tunseth at 352-2268 or email news@frontiersman.com