The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office advises citizens to be aware of a new “local” version of a telephone scam.

The scammer calls the victim claiming to be a volunteer or employee of the Douglas County Senior Citizens Center. The scammer claims he/she is soliciting funds on behalf of the Senior Center to donate to the American Cancer Society.

The scammer tells the victim that if they would like to donate to the fund, they can provide their credit card or debit card information to the employee/volunteer, and the donation will be automatically deducted from their account.

There has been only one reported successful incident of this nature in Douglas County; but citizens – particularly senior citizens who are the typical targets of these scams – are advised to be cautious of such incidents.

Travis Lee, director of Douglas County Senior Services, advises that his staff does not solicit credit card or debit card information from people, and would never solicit seniors for donations of any sort.

This fund-raising scam is just the latest of ongoing identity theft/monetary theft scams where suspects use the telephone, mail or computer to try to get peo­ple to reveal their personal or financial information.

It doesn’t matter why the sus­pects are calling. The rea­sons are just different variants of the same scam – to get per­sonal identification or bank account/credit card information for fraud­ulent purposes.

Protecting yourself is sim­ple: Never give this type of informa­tion out when you receive such a telephone call, mail or online contact. If you would like to donate to a charitable organization, do so by contacting that organization directly.