Due to recent budge cuts many federal workers have been furoughed, thereby losing considerable money.  As always scammers are there ready to make a bad situation worse and take advantage of people in a desperate situation.  Government employees are receiving telephone calls informing them that they are eligible for free grants.  All the worker has to do is just give their bank account information to the caller over the phone and, they are told, the money will be directly deposited into their account.  This is a scam.  Never give personal information such as bank account information to anyone over the phone whom you have not called because you have no way of knowing if they are legitimate.  In this case, there are no free grants for furloughed federal workers.  As usual, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

TIPS

Never give personal information to anyone over the phone to someone you have not called who has a legitimate reason to have the information.  Even if you have caller ID, scammers are able to “spoof” or copy the telephone number of a legitimate agency or company and make it appear that the call is legitimate.  If you ever are tempted to provide information to someone who represents that he or she is with an agency or company that truly needs that information, hang up and call the real agency or company and you will find out it was all a scam.  When people are desperate, they do foolish things.  Don’t be one of those people.