Scam Warning!

We sent the following message out this morning (Feb. 8) to our church's general email distribution list:

Goshen Family,

I’ve been hearing this morning that several Goshen people have received emails claiming to be from me—but they are NOT from me.  It is a SCAM.

The emails say things like:

• Can you spare a moment? I have a discreet request that I'd like you to attend to. I'm currently headed to a meeting and would prefer communication via email rather than phone calls. Kindly respond promptly to my email
• I would be glad if I could have a moment, I want you to attend to something discreetly for me. Currently on my way to a meeting, just respond to my email promptly

If one replies to such emails, the scammers will then ask you to do something like:

• GREAT! Here's what I want you to do for me because I'm going to be busy althrough today and tomorrow. I have been working on incentives and I aimed at surprising some of our diligent staff/ministry leaders with gift cards this week. This should be Confidential until they all have the gift cards as it's a surprise and you will keep one for yourself too.  Can you get this done today

The scammers would follow up and try to get you to obtain gift cards and then have you give them the numbers off the gift cards—so that they can steal your money.  Quite a devious scheme to play off of the name of someone you know in order to scam you for money!

Please do not reply to these emails.

Also, keep an eye on the “from” email address—in all of the cases I’ve seen today (hearing from 4 people), the actual sending email address was not my Goshen email but an obscure “@gmail.com” address.

And please be assured:  I will NEVER email you and ask you to do discreet / secret tasks for me, or to go obtain gift cards, or any such thing.

Sorry for the nuisance!

Pastor Peter

For more info on email scams involving requests for gift cards, see these resources from the Federal Trade Commission (notice the ftc.gov URLs):  click here and here.