Over the weekend, the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office was made aware of a new scam targeting church congregations in central Louisiana.
It seems that the scammers identify the members of the board of directors of churches and then send emails to the church office, in hopes of acquiring the entire church membership directory. For clarity, they did not hack the board member’s email account or steal their identity. Rather, they obtained the email address from open source and sent an email with the request.
The RPSO warns the public to always check the email address when information is being requested. If the person making the request is not known to the recipient or has never used the email used for the request, give them a call to make sure it is them.
In busy times, sometimes people get in the habit of answering emails without really paying attention to the email address. Most of the time the scammers invent an email address that looks very similar to the legitimate email address of the requestor. The RPSO reminds the public to always delete emails that look suspicious.