Cherokee County residents have recently been receiving calls from scammers purporting to be with Amazon.  These individuals are calling people and claiming they’re in the process of investigating what may be “unauthorized” charges of $500 made to their Amazon account – and they need to check your information against what they currently have on file – in other words – they’re “phishing” for information. 

Now, what’s tripping them up is the fact that some of our local residents don’t have Amazon accounts – period. 

Several of these callers claim to be associated with the company’s New York headquartered “Clearance Center”.

We did some on-line research, and yes – this is just ONE example of several scams currently using the Amazon name.  Because of the name recognition factor, con artists have swarmed the retail giant and used their name and image in almost every single way imaginable to try and take advantage of consumers – fake job offers, gift card scams, fake emails trying to get you to click on dangerous links – the list goes on and on.

When in doubt, hang up.  Never trust anyone contacting YOU.  Always contact the company yourself by using their official company media outlets.  And that goes for any company NOT just Amazon, 

As always, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.