Beware - Recent Scam Attempts

Over the past few years, and even in the last week, our congregation has been targeted by many groups of scammers in attempts to extract money (in the form of gift cards) from our congregants. These scams take many shapes, but I wanted to highlight a common repeat offender that we've noticed because it seems innocuous at first which is how it might fly under the radar. Afterward, I'll also go over a few things you can check to help determine if you're being contacted genuinely or by someone more malicious.

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The Directory Scam

You may be contacted by someone posing to be a member of our Fellowship - for instance, scammers may look at our website and find the name of Rev. Sasha Ostrom and pretend to be her, or our current board president, Nan Perigo. They'll reach out to you, typically through email or text, impersonating this person with a simple request: they'll claim to have lost access to our membership directory, and ask if you can send them your copy. If you engage with them, they'll help guide you into how to obtain that information to send to them.

While it might seem innocuous because they're not directly trying to get money out of you, what they're doing is trying to gain the contact information of everyone else at our Fellowship in order to reach out to them with a more targeted campaign to get money from them.

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What should I do if I'm contacted by a scammer?

The answer to this is quite simple - don't engage with them! Don't even entertain their inquiry. If you respond at all, you're telling them that you are a real person and the information they have about you is likely correct, and they may take advantage of that or pass that info along to other scammers to use at a later time. In today's day and age, enough of these scam emails go out that it's hardly worth even reporting it to our Fellowship staff, but feel free to reach out to us if you're uncertain.

How can I tell if it's actually a scammer?

To start with, this doesn't apply to all congregants, but all staff and board members will only contact you about Fellowship business from an @muuf.org email address. Additionally, in the age of AI and machine learning, it's also worth being cautious about phone calls or pre-recorded messages that sound eerily similar to Rev. Sasha's voice - these are becoming exceedingly easy to fake, with the ample training data we provide (by having our services available online).

To help combat this, it's worth always being mindful of the context. Rev. Sasha will never contact you digitally (via phone, email, or text) asking for gift cards or money in any way. That is simply not how our congregation operates.

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Remember, scam and phishing attempts can happen to anyone, and there's no shame in falling for one (they can be exceedingly convincing!), but sticking to the above guidelines should help you weed out fact from fiction.

Stay safe!