There have multiple reports of people claiming to be employees of Central Maine Power going door-to-door and turning out to be scammers.
Here’s a reminder and some helpful hints courtesy of the Damariscotta Police Department facebook page:
FROM CMP:
Instructions For Interacting With People Claiming To Be CMP
Good morning – Central Maine Power (CMP) has been made aware of imposters reaching out to residents and businesses in your community. These aggressive tactics include scammers going door-to-door posing as CMP personnel. Below are a handful of reminders and warnings to be aware of. If you have heard of any of this happening in your town, please let us know.
As a reminder, CMP will never:
Send an employee inside your personal residence to use a computer or other device.
Have an employee take a photo of your electric bill.
Send an employee to your home to offer a discount, offer a cost-savings program or encourage you to sign up for a service.
Ask customers to make a payment with a pre-paid debit card or other non-refundable methods.
Customers should also be aware of some of the known scammer tactics:
Fraudulent phone numbers: Caller ID may show the call is coming from the utility. In some cases, the perpetrators pretend to have specific knowledge about the customers they’re calling and may even provide a callback number with a recorded greeting similar to CMP’s company’s customer service line.
Fraudulent emails and texts: Scammers are using digital correspondence to portray themselves as the utility.
Door-to-door imposters: Scammers are posing as CMP employees and asking about utility bills.
Types of scams that customers should look out for include:
Disconnection threat: Someone posing as a utility representative, aggressively telling a customer their account is past due and a crew is on the way to shut off service unless an immediate payment is made—typically using a prepaid debit card or another non-refundable form of payment.
Meter payment: The caller or in-person scammer instructs the customer to pay with cash or a prepaid debit card to cover the costs of a new meter or meter upgrade.
Information request: The caller insists that a recent payment encountered a system glitch and was not completed, or that the company had not received the payment at all. The perpetrator then asks the customer to make a false payment using a prepaid debit card or by providing personal bank account information.
A reminder from CMP about past scams HERE.
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