Two Fry’s employees in Arizona help customer avoid SRP scam
Sep 19, 2017, 6:09 AM | Updated: 11:34 am
(Yelp Photo)
PHOENIX — Two employees from an Arizona grocery store helped prevent a customer from falling victim to a scam artist pretending to work for a local utility company.
Two employees from Fry’s Food and Drug prevented a customer from becoming a victim of a scam scheme after the Salt River Project customer tried to buy a prepaid card at the store.
The employees, who have only been identified as Stuart and Lori, saw the unidentified customer as they attempted to buy several of the prepaid MoneyPak cards from the store, warned him about the ongoing scams and urged him to investigate further.
The customer, who is a small business owner in the Valley, received a call from a 1-844-number that claimed to be with SRP. The scam artist threatened the customer, saying they owned hundreds of dollars to the utility company or else their power would be turned off.
The customer became suspicious but thought the call was legitimate after hearing replica of SRP’s interactive-automated voice recording system, so they went to the Fry’s grocery store and bought a MoneyPak card, before leaving the store and making an initial payment.
The scam artist said the money was not enough, so the customer went back to the store to buy another MoneyPak card, where Stuart and Lori warned them that it might be a possible scam. The customer then checked their electric bill and realized it was not past due.
Customers who think they might be getting scammed can call SRP at 602-236-8833 for business customers or 602-236-8888 for residential customers, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.