Full Notification

A Fayette County resident recently reported fraud involving her computer and bank accounts.

This scam is very popular. A person will contact a victim and advise they are from a company like Microsoft. The person will say a monitoring system has detected there is a virus on the victims computer and they can assist them in removing it.

The person will talk the victim through installing a popular remote software such as TeamViewer. Once installed and the person has access to the victim's computer they will take advantage of internet favorites and saved passwords to access bank accounts. What may start out as a small fee to "help" can turn into thousands of dollars.

The person will often turn to discussing friends or family using information found on the computer. If questioned about the activity they may use threats against the victim or their family members in an effort to continue the scam.

This activity has many variations and there are many resources available on the on the internet that detail these scams.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/safety/online-privacy/avoid-phone-scams.aspx