A LOCAL resident has called for the community to be aware of phone scams as the tax return deadline looms.
Tresco resident Lisa Condy received a phone call last week to tell her she was entitled to an overcharge fee from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), coming to a total of $5248.
“I thought beauty, I could really use the money at the moment,” she said.
The callers, who identified themselves as government representatives, gave her a reference number and a callback number in NSW.
When she was asked to go to the post office and put $199 into an overseas lawyer’s Western Union account to claim her money, she started to suspect something was not right.
She called the police the following morning and was told it was a scam.
Ms Condy said she hadn’t heard of anyone else who had been affected but wanted people to be aware the scammers were out and about.
“I think they just pick them at random, I had no idea,” she said.
The deadline to lodge your tax return with the ATO is Wednesday, October 31.
