Last updated April 12, 2019
Residents of Danville are being warned to watch out for a rash of text messages sent to their new and old cell phones with the intention of trying to scam them out of their banking information. One resident has submitted a report to Danville Police over the weekend, with others both in and out of the county also saying that they have been in receipt of similar messages. The text messages claim to be coming from First Midwest.
Yesterday, Police Deputy Director Doug Miller confirmed that the texts are a part of a large text messaging scam that have been sent out to residents all over both the city and the county. He added that the resident who submitted the report to police over the weekend had admitted to receiving a text message called “First Midwest”, which asked her to call a particular phone number. When calling the number, she was then greeted by an automatic operator that informed her that there was some kind of problem with her account and requested both her account number and certain other information. Miller says that the woman wisely did not comply with the request and, upon attempting to call the phone number from which the text had been sent, she was told that it had been disconnected. The woman then called the police and when trying the phone number again, then encountered an audio message from the FTC (Federal Trade Commission).