Missouri State Treasurer Clint Zweifel has issued a warning to Missourians regarding an email scam related to the collection of unclaimed property.
Zweifel has made a point of returning unclaimed property to Missourians recently.
Here are the details of the scam, as described in a release from Zweifel:
The current scam email states a fake individual, Jeff Smith, director of the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, is working with the FBI to return $2.8 million found with the recipient’s email address and name attached. It further requests private information, including therecipient’s full name, address, telephone number, age and occupation. If a person responds, he or she is then directed to call an attorney based in the United Kingdom to provide personal financial information – the respondent then is charged high fees for the call. An example of the fraudulent emails can be found here.
“My team only sends out emails in response to constituent questions, while working with an individual who has already begun the claims process or to let individuals who have registered for email notifications know of recently added unclaimed property,” Zweifel said.
Zweifel encourages those who wish to verify the validity of an unclaimed property email to call his office at (573) 751-0123.
