Two telephone scams are targeting Ohio’s poor.
The Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services released a statement Tuesday warning Ohioans of two separate scams that offer individuals unemployment compensation in exchange for credit card and social security information.
The department received multiple reports from citizens who claimed they received the scam calls, said Benjamin Johnson, spokesman for Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services.
The scam calls were made from the 213 and 215 area codes, from Los Angeles and Philadelphia, respectively, Johnson said.
Johnson said that the calls were probably made at random.
“Names of people receiving unemployment compensation are confidential, so what may have happened is that they are calling random numbers just so they may happen upon people who do qualify for compensation,” he said.
Athens County Department of Jobs and Family Services officials were unaware of the scam, said Nick Claussen, department community relations coordinator.
“We haven’t heard anything about it down here,” Claussen said. “I’d caution people to be careful, as they always should with these things.”
Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services officials have been impersonated in past telephone scams, Johnson said.
The department will never request credit card information or personal identification numbers during phone calls and representatives always identify themselves, according to the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services release.
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