Barb Kearney, a Carmi woman who happily retired 7 years ago after a successful run owning H.D. Bean Jewelers received some interesting mail Saturday, an Illinois Department of Employment Security prepaid debit card. She knew immediately it was fishy, but says it looked completely legit.
“If I were an honest recipient, it would’ve worked. What I received in the mail is a prepaid debit card issued by Key Bank from the Illinois Department of Employment Security.”
Carmi Police Chief Jason Carter says he received two complaints regarding the bogus IDES prepaid cards Tuesday and both individuals said they knew others that had received them as well. Carter says the prepaid cards, whether it’s an outright scam, an attempt at Identity Theft, or a blatant screwup by a government office have been going out as far as he can tell since at least June. Both residents said they reached out to Key Bank. Authorities there say they’re investigating. Calls from the individuals to the IDES didn’t go nearly as smoothly. Since CoViD-19, it’s proven nearly impossible to get ahold of anyone at the agency and many report nobody is returning messages either.
Kearney says based on her research, just throwing it away, cutting it up, or ignoring it isn’t enough and that it’s far more advantageous to be proactive by contacting police to file an informational report so there’s a paper trail in case scammers or identity thieves do try to take advantage.
“You have to act immediately. One of the first things you need to know is it’s important to NOT activate it. Then the bad guys could claim that it was lost, missing or torn up in the mail and then they could apply for another one.”
Kearney says follow that up by contacting your credit bureaus to make sure everything is in order and to potentially put a freeze or a fraud alert on it to keep anything unsavory from happening. And finally, Kearney recommends filing that report with local police so there’s a paper trail and time stamp that you have in fact been proactive.
Carter closed with,
“As with anything, if something sounds too good to be true, and if there is actually money on these (and I’ve been told there is at least one individual that activated his and there is money on it) I can only imagine and assume that at some point in time, the state is going to come back to that person and say, ‘Hey I want my money back.’. I would just urge people that if you’ve not applied for unemployment benefits and you receive one of these in the mail, do not activate it and try to let the bank know, as well as IDES and of course we’ll do an informational report just to cover your bases.”
