Burglaries and normal thefts are lower than they’ve ever been but people in Carlow and Kilkenny are still be robbed.
It’s Fraud Awareness Week and local Gardai are pleading with people to take internet and phone scams seriously.
The message is to never click on a link that you’re not sure about in an unsolicited email or text and never give out personal details or passwords.
Crime Prevention Officer for the Kilkenny Carlow Division Sgt Peter McConnon says this kind of offence has become much more common during the pandemic, telling KCLR News “Our traditional crimes of burglary and theft and criminal damage are very, very low at the moment, they’re at the lowest point they’ve ever been, but what we are getting inundated with is reports of people getting scammed through online fraud, these frauds come in the form of texts, emails or phone calls so again it’s something that we see a huge increase in in the last couple of months”.
He also says “The nature of the crime is that if you click on it and you’re caught out it’s very, very hard to detect and the big concern that we have at the moment is that people who are getting caught out are probably not reporting it out of fear of feeling silly or feeling stupid, they shouldn’t feel this way, the financial institutions have safeguards in place in quite a number of cases so the sooner that that is reported to financial institutions or the gardaí who will advise you to go a particular route, the better the chances are that your money is going to be saved”.
And Sgt McConnon adds “We’re asking people to stop and think before acting on it, a lot of these messages come with a sense of urgency you know ‘if you don’t click on this link now you’re finances have been compromised’, ‘if you don’t click on the message immediately the chances are that we won’t be able to retrieve the money for you’; these are all scams, people need to realise that if you get a message in like that, that’s unsolicited with a link in it purporting to be from Revenue, financial institution or a major shopping site like Amazon”.
