Does Maine’s New Phone Scam Involve Receiving Texts From Inmates?

Maine Bank Scam

Recently, we filled you in on a fresh scam (because it's a different day that ends in "y," so why wouldn't there be a new scam) that involves typically elderly Mainers receiving phone calls from some scumbags pretending to be their bank or credit union and asking for an online or in person cash payment.

Fast forward one day and it looks like a brand new scam may have hit Maine. Now, just straight up information, this hasn't been confirmed to be an official scam, and maybe it was a fat finger issue, but either way, in a day where everyone is getting some sort of scam flung their way, it's our job to give you a heads up.

Smishing Scams

If you're not familiar with the term "smishing," it's essentially a type of social engineering attack where a hacker attempts to gain access to your personal information with a random text, pretending to be someone like your bank, Amazon, USPS, etc., by having you click a link in what looks like a legitimate text message.

There are also some phone and text-related scams where hackers attempt to see if a phone number is still active, either by calling or texting and seeing what the response, if any, entails.

And there's a chance that's exactly what happened to this writer recently.

Because I'm not sure if there would be any legal implications, plus to just flat out avoid public shaming, the phone number this text message came from as well as the name mentioned in the text message are both blurred out.

I also don't know a soul that lives in Kentucky (and can barely point it out on a map, honestly), but I recently received the above text message. Intrigued (but more so confused and annoyed), I Googled the name that was mentioned in the text along with "Casey County Kentucky."

What came back was a recent arrest record for the person mentioned in the text message from Casey County, Kentucky. What happens when typing in ACCEPT or STOP, as instructed in the text message, is unknown, since I just skipped right to the step of blocking the phone number all together.

However, at the end of the day, it's just another possible scam out there for Mainers to be on the lookout for.