In one, the Roanoke Rapids Police Department reports scammers are using text messages purportedly sent from banks to gain financial information. In another, two Weldon residents report the scammers prey on emotions by claiming the potential victim’s family member needs bail money.

Captain Andy Jackson of the police department said investigators have received reports from people receiving text messages from banks requiring account information. “It’s totally bogus.”

This isn’t happening only in Roanoke Rapids, Chief Jeff Hinton said today. “It’s a nationwide problem. We just ask that people realize any legitimate business will not be asking for personal information.”

Jackson said many of these operations set up in makeshift offices like apartments so they can leave quickly before getting into trouble with the law, making it hard for even federal authorities to find them.

Many other scams originate in foreign countries. “The public has to help us by using a little common sense,” Jackson said.

Any text message from a businesses supposedly a bank should not be replied to and the potential victim should contact their bank and tell them what happened.

Meanwhile in Weldon, Nancy Eckert and her friend, Doris Rose, told rrspin.com last week Rose nearly became a victim of a scam involving Rose’s grandson.

Eckert said Rose received a call last week from someone crying, saying they were Rose’s grandson who was jailed in the Dominican Republic after drugs were found in a rental car.

Then a person, either a jailer or police officer, got on the phone and said Rose’s grandson could be released if the family wired $4,700.

Rose said the person pretending to be her grandson sounded just like him and she was tempted to send the money. “There was no way it could be anybody else.”

As she debated whether to send the money and after four calls from the scammers, Rose talked with her grandson’s father who tracked down his son and learned he was at work in the Raleigh area..

Eckert said she and Rose want to warn people about this scam. “I don’t want it to happen to me. I was just as afraid as Doris was.”