Ky. police departments warn of scams on their Facebook pages

RICHMOND, Ky. (WKYT) - A new warning as you scroll through social media or before you open that new text or email.

“When we posted for the Breast Cancer Awareness month, we put that patch on there. Then they started popping up. They made this shirt with our special patch for the breast cancer awareness month,” Richmond Police Chief Rodney Richardson said.

Richardson saw t-shirts with Richmond Police’s breast cancer awareness patch.

“I noticed they had this shirt they were selling, and that’s when I knew I had to get those comments off, as quickly as I can,” he continued.

Richmond Police said they’ve noticed over the past few days, various fraudulent links being posted in the comments sections on their Facebook page.

The comments look like this, just in slightly different forms:

⚠️CAUTION ⚠️ We have noticed over the past few days that various fraudulent links are being posted in the comments...
Posted by Richmond Police Department on Sunday, October 9, 2022

“On most of our posts, they would go through various locations and post that comment. They would tag people, too. So, some of our followers were tagged in it. And they had a link you could click on to order the t-shirt,” Richardson said.

Richardson said they are not selling shirts to anyone and clicking on these types of links can inadvertently give scammers your personal information.

“It’s difficult because you have a lot of people who support the department and then they see a t-shirt that looks like a department t-shirt and people may click on that, not knowing that it’s fraud,” he said.

The Richmond Police Department isn’t the only department warning of these scams. The Nicholasville Police Department made a similar post:

We are beginning to notice that there are people attempting to sell Nicholasville Police Department t-shirts and...
Posted by Nicholasville Police Department on Monday, October 10, 2022

Back in July, the Magoffin County Sheriff’s Office also made a post warning people about texts and emails going around, asking people to click on a link to buy shirts, as well.

“That’s the times we live in, you just have to be real cautious,” Richardson said. By the number of comments on each of the departments’ posts, the scam has reached quite a few people already.

Richardson says if you are ever questioning whether something is a scam-to reach out to your local police department and just check with them.

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