Friday 6 May 2022

The Daily Money: Watch out for this utility company scam

07:56

By: Unknown on 07:56

Share it Please

ALL THE MONEY NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Friday, May 6

New to the newsletter? Subscribe to The Daily Money to get the best consumer and financial news from USA TODAY delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. And give our news-inspired Spotify playlist a listen. It features every song quoted here.

Happy Friday, Daily Money readers. Jayme Deerwester here with you as we head into Mother's Day and Kentucky Derby weekend.

I'm slightly disappointed there are no amusing horse names on this year's Derby entry list, save for maybe 'Tiz the Bomb. By the way, according to this horse generator name game, mine is Spunky Pegasus, but I see myself as more of an Incorrigible Narwhal.

Is that really your utility company calling?

Ah, scammers. If they put half the energy into being productive members of society as they do cooking up new schemes, they could probably solve the country's problems.

But they don't and that's how we ended up with ne'er-do-wells calling people and telling them their power will be shut off unless they agree to send hundreds of dollars via cash-transfer service Zelle. And according to Caller ID, they even seem to be coming from legit numbers associated with your local utility company.

All across the country, we're hearing reports of utility shutoff scams. In Iowa, MidAmerican Energy customers reported receiving threatening calls from scammers about unpaid bills. Con artists who appeared to be from Dominion Gas in Ohio even showed up at the door in some areas threatening shutoffs, according to the Better Business Bureau Serving Greater Cleveland.

Remember, if you authorize a payment via Zelle, even if it's a scam, you may not be able to get your money back. You'd never give cash to a stranger, so you have to treat Zelle the same way.

📰 More headlines you can't miss 📰

ECONOMY ADDS 428,000 JOBS: Unemployment rate unchanged at 3.6% in April even as COVID case ticked upward.

STOCKS SLIDE: Dow and Nasdaq fall the most in one day since 2020.

NURSES WEEK DEALS: Find discounts, freebies at Chipotle, Crocs starting Friday.

ARE CRIME RATE, PANDEMIC RECOVERY LINKED? Cities like New York, Los Angeles and Milwaukee find things haven't improved much since 2020.

LAST-MINUTE MOTHER'S DAY GIFTS: Gather 'round, all ye procrastinators.

Where'd you get that number, kid?

Today's college students expect to make about $103,880 in their first job after graduation, a survey suggests. But the reality is much lower – the average starting salary is actually about half that at $55,260, statistics show.

The survey, conducted by Real Estate Witch, found that, across all majors and institutions, undergraduate students overestimate their starting salaries by 88%. And about a third worry that they won't make enough money to live comfortably after graduation.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers' salary projections for this year's college graduates were mixed. Most fields saw increases – with salaries for those majoring in math and sciences, and agriculture and natural resources rising 5.4%. Meanwhile, humanities majors saw a salary decrease of 14.8% and communications majors saw a drop of 4.7%.

🎧 Mood music 🎧

Today's lyric from Jamiroquai (the guys who brought you "Virtual Insanity" in the mid-'90s) tries to understand what motivates scammers.

"You have to be a schemer if you wanna love the life you have to live. And it don't matter how much that I earn, 'cause I always get my fingers burned."

LISTEN WHILE YOU WORK: You can hear just about every song quoted in the newsletter on the Daily Money Mood Music playlist on Spotify.

Now scammers are impersonating utility companies with caller ID

Consumers who lost $375 to $700 on utility shut-off scams were told by con artists to pay via the money transfer app Zelle, which is like giving cash.