By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
In the last few months, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Brandon substation has gotten an increase in calls about phone and mail scams.
“They go on all year, but it seems to be in the last two or three months we got a few more calls about them,” said substation commander Lt. Greg Glover.
Glover said he is seeing three major scams going around, one of which is a phone call of a person claiming to be from the IRS and claiming the person owes the government money.
“They will ask you to go to your local Rite Aid or CVS and put money on a Green Dot card and call them back with that information,” said Glover. “The IRS is never going to call you, they will send you certified mail.”
A similar scam is also going around where the caller claims to be a police officer, claiming that a child or grandchild is in jail and they ask for a bond payment on a Green Dot card.

“They will never call you for that. If anything, they would show up at your house,” said Glover.
Since this time of year is also popular for online shopping, another scam Glover is warning of is an email scam. The sender sends a receipt that appears to be for an Amazon purchase sent to someone else, saying the receiver owes money for that purchase. There is a phone number on the email.
“They call the number, and the person on the other line asks to confirm their credit card, and then they have that number,” said Glover.
Amazon has a phone number on their website for customer service that a customer could call instead
Glover stresses that it is important to never give personal information over the phone, such as social security numbers or credit card information.
“No real entity will ever call and ask for that information,” he said. “They can always call the substation. I’d rather they call us than lose out, because those funds are almost impossible to recover.”
Lastly, Glover said there have been some reports of phone calls claiming to be police or fire officials asking for donations.
“I don’t know of any of those that would call and ask for that,” he said.
If anyone believes they received a suspicious phone call or piece of mail, please call the substation at 248-627-4911.