As most of our members are aware, there is a long history of scammers targeting church members (at both our church and others across the country) with emails that look like they’re from one of our ministers, and asking for the recipient’s help with something…which often turns out to be sending cash or gift cards to someone in need. This may be an attempt to collect credit card information.
Today, we’ve been alerted to a new instance of the problem, this time using text messages to church members that seem to be from Rev. Jeremiah. The text reads (or is a slight variation of):
Hello, XXXX,
I need your help with something important please let me know if you’re available today. I may not be able to answer calls quickly, so please text me instead. Thank you.
Rev. Jeremiah
One of our members did reply, and was then asked to send gift cards to someone – the clear confirmation of the scam intent.
In the past, we’ve seen variations on this scam that make this same kind of approach via email, using either same kind of pitch above, or one that disguises itself as a fake Evite party invitation…but this is the first time we’ve faced a barrage of the notes coming in text form.
If you receive any variation of this text, please DO NOT RESPOND, and please DO REPORT AS SPAM and BLOCK THE SENDER.
Also, if you have any doubt about the legitimacy of the text, please look at the sender’s phone number – instead of a local area code, it will have an unfamiliar one such as 406, 534 or something else you don’t recognize. (For the email versions of the scam, the big “tell” is that the email does not come from a uusm.org address and instead comes from something like uusmminister@gmail.com. Church personnel NEVER use non-uusm.org addresses for official communications.) Also, for both the text and email versions, there will always be some kind of wording that the sender is in a meeting or otherwise unavailable, so the recipient should be careful to email or text their response instead of calling or getting in touch via more usual channels. There is often also a request for the recipient to be “discreet.” If you see any version of these messages, you can be sure the text or email is a scam and you should not respond in any way.
Finally and very unfortunately, there’s nothing the church or its staff or members can do about these scams (other than reporting the messages as described above). The communications come from outside the church, and the scammers are likely harvesting email addresses and phone numbers through a virus or malware infecting someone else’s phone or computer that has a bunch of church emails and/or phone numbers in its address book. So it’s not at all something we can control. Please be vigilant!
