Press Release - Attempted Telephone Scam Involving Back Taxes and Foreclosed Property

On June 9, 2015, the Rock County Sheriff’s Office received a report from the Rock County Treasurer’s Office of an attempted phone scam involving unpaid taxes and foreclosed property. The victim received a call from an unknown person claiming to be from the Rock County Treasurer’s Office and demanded the victim provide their credit card information over the phone in order to pay overdue taxes. The caller told the victim if they did not provide their credit card information, the Sheriff’s Office would foreclose and sell their property. According to the victim, the caller was extremely aggressive in trying to obtain their credit card information.

The victim did not give out any credit card information and reported the attempted scam to the Treasurer’s Office immediately.

Sheriff Spoden would like to remind everyone that Rock County will never ask for credit card information over the phone for any reason. The Treasurer’s Office also does not call citizens until they are at least three years past due on their taxes and they never take payments over the phone. The Treasurer’s Office uses a third party payment source called Gov Tech Services Inc. to collect all credit card tax payments. For more information on tax payments you can visit the Rock County Treasurer’s Office website at www.co.rock.wi.us/treasurer.

If you receive a phone call from someone claiming to be from Rock County and they ask for any credit card information, do not give any information out and call the Sheriff’s Office to report the incident.

ROBERT D. SPODEN
SHERIFF