Better Business Bureau offers new scam tracker

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) In the couple of weeks that the Better Business Bureau’s local chapter began offering its new scam tracker, employees have processed nearly 50 scams in the 23 counties it covers.

The BBB launched the Scam Tracker earlier this year and now all BBB’s nationwide decided to get on board.

“This is on our website. So, it’s available 24/7. It’s a free service to our consumers just like our complaints and our customer reviews,” Sandy Gamby, Vice President of Operations at the BBB said.

The Scam Tracker features a map, with specific scams in your area. So, if people get a suspicious email or phone call, they can now search to see if others are getting the same emails or calls.

“It’s really driven by zip code that you put in, it gets filtered to that BBB for processing,” Gamby said.

The new system allows anyone to make a report.

“No information about you as the victim is out there being published so there’s no embarrassment factor that you should consider at all,” Gamby said, “A lot of times you won’t have a lot of information so there isn’t a lot to report. But you report as much information as you can for instance, ‘I got a call from the IRS, this is the phone number on my caller ID’ and that’s all captured in the scam and it’s searchable by that information.”

In Indiana, nearly 200 scams have been reported. The local chapter expects that number to only grow.

“We’re hoping that when this gets more publicity, we’ll get a lot more people going on there and reporting those,” Gamby said.

To access the map, click here.