Senior Law Project offers Stanislaus Scam Line

The Senior Advocacy Network’s Senior Law Project is using door hangers to alert residents to its new Stanislaus Scam Line, where callers can leave messages to report scams or ask for help.

The door hangers give brief descriptions of the 10 most common scams occurring in the county, and the phone line includes a short recording about several of them. The recording will be updated as popular scams change, according to the Senior Law Project.

Of particular note, Law Project attorney Joyce Gandelman told The Bee in an email, a scam in which callers claim to be with the IRS seems to have morphed into bogus calls from its parent, the Treasury Department. “We have received at least three calls from clients who have been contacted by phone from the Treasury Department telling them to pay up or else they will be arrested,” she said. “On one call, our law clerk contacted the number that was given and the heavily accented man on the other line said the police were on their way and then repeatedly told him to ‘F’ off.”

The Law Project flier includes the so-called mobile dent fixer scam, in which people cruise parking lots looking for dented cars, offer to fix the dents for a fee but often cause more damage than they fix. “Recent reports were of three men in a pickup at Roseburg Square,” Gandelman said, “but another later called me (about) some guys in a blue van with white lettering, who actually gave her a bogus business card for an auto repair on Seventh or Eighth Street, followed her home, offered to do more work, even took her to her bank to get money and then never did the work. She was taken for about $400.”

To distribute the door hangers, the Law Project gave a couple thousand to the Modesto Police Department for National Night Out early this month, Gandelman said. It also distributes them at speaking events. “The point is to get them out to seniors who are homebound and don’t get out to the senior outreach events and are the most vulnerable,” she said. “We ask neighbors to take them and give them or hang them on the doors of these seniors in their neighborhood.”

The Senior Advocacy Network also hopes to have the scam list posted on its website, www.senioradvocacynetwork.org, within a couple of weeks, Gandelman said.

The number for the Stanislaus Scam Line is 209-996-7226. The line is not answered, so to speak with someone at the Senior Law Project, call 209-577-3814.

This story was originally published August 18, 2015 at 8:48 AM with the headline "Senior Law Project offers Stanislaus Scam Line."