Idaho Power Scam

When temperatures rise – so do tempers, crime, and power bills. Mix a few of those together and you get a nasty brew of scammers posing as the local power company. In fact, Better Business Bureau has received multiple reports of scammers calling residents and businesses claiming to be Idaho Power Company and threatening to shut off the juice if they don’t pay up.   

And, the scam is pricey. An Ada County woman recently lost $897 to this con job. The report to BBB Scam Tracker said she received a message claiming to be Idaho Power saying her power would be shut off in thirty minutes. Panicked, she called back and reached what sounded like the real Idaho Power answering message. When she got someone on the phone, they listed addresses for two of her properties and said her nearly $900 bill was overdue. It was almost 5:00pm, and the scammer told her they were about to close, and she needed to pay immediately. “I was told to go to Walgreens and purchase Money Pac cards and then to call the technician who was sitting at the jobsite to turn the power off and give him the card numbers. I did.”

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