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WEST VALLEY CITY — It's an aggressive phone call: pay now or lose power.
It scared a West Valley City woman into quickly reaching for her debit card, only to discover too late that she'd been ripped off by an impostor.
Scammers posing as the power company is certainly not a new scam, but that does not make it any less financially devastating for the people who fall for it.
And make no mistake, a lot of people are falling for it.
"How could I fall for something so stupid?" said Melissa Brink. "I know better."
For Brink, being without power is not an option.
"My youngest son has a kidney disease," she said. "I can't be without power. I can't."
So, you can imagine her panic when a caller told here there had been an error with a payment she made in March, and she needed to pay it immediately.
"In the beginning of the conversation, it was my power is going to be turned off in 30 to 45 minutes," Brink told the KSL Investigators. "And then, as I start arguing about whether or not to give him my banking information, my card information, he tells me that you only have 15 minutes until they're there to turn it off."
Between the stress of the situation and the fact that the caller had spoofed their phone number to disguise it as Rocky Mountain Power on her caller ID, she gave her bank account number to pay the $50 bill.
Just moments later, she received an alert from the bank that $500 had been withdrawn.
Brink is far from alone on this, and alas, fighting this scam is like the carnival game of whack-a-mole. Just as Rocky Mountain Power gets a scammer's phone number shut down, another one pops back up.
"It's very difficult to police this because many of them operate from outside the country," said Dave Eskelsen with Rocky Mountain Power.
He said if you get a call from someone claiming to be with Rocky Mountain Power, threatening an immediate disconnect — that's a huge red flag you're talking to a scam artist.
"We don't do that," Eskelsen expressed. "Disconnection is a very deliberate process, and we take extraordinary steps to help our customers get current if they're behind."
"I'm embarrassed. I actually have chills," said Brink, who knows her money is gone. "I can't, but I want to cry."
She called the KSL Investigators in hopes of others seeing this story so they will not fall for it.
"I've heard of two people I directly know who fell for the same thing," she said.
This scam is so pervasive that the power company advised: if you do get a call from them, hang up on them! Then call back the power company directly to make sure it was really them calling. Chances are, it wasn't!
