Central Maine Power (CMP) has been made aware of imposters approaching residential and commercial buildings claiming to be from CMP. Below is a link to a WGME news story aired on 1/22 as well as a handful of reminders and warnings to be aware of. If you hear of any of this happening in your area, please let us know.
WGME News Story
(The above URL redirects outside the Town of Bowdoin website. The Town of Bowdoin takes no responsibility for the content of this link.)
As a reminder, CMP will never:
- Send an employee inside your personal residence to use a computer or other device.
- Have an employee take a photo of your electric bill.
- Send an employee to your home to offer a discount, offer a cost-savings program or encourage you to sign up for a service.
- Ask customers to make a payment with a pre-paid debit card or other non-refundable methods.
Customers should also be aware of some of the known scammer tactics:
- Fraudulent phone numbers: Caller ID may show the call is coming from the utility. In some cases, the perpetrators pretend to have specific knowledge about the customers they’re calling and may even provide a callback number with a recorded greeting similar to CMP’s company’s customer service line.
- Fraudulent emails and texts: Scammers are using digital correspondence to portray themselves as the utility.
- Door-to-door imposters: Scammers are posing as CMP employees and asking about utility bills.
Types of scams that customers should look out for include:
- Disconnection threat: Someone posing as a utility representative, aggressively telling a customer their account is past due and a crew is on the way to shut off service unless an immediate payment is made—typically using a prepaid debit card or another non-refundable form of payment.
- Meter payment: The caller or in-person scammer instructs the customer to pay with cash or a prepaid debit card to cover the costs of a new meter or meter upgrade.
- Information request: The caller insists that a recent payment encountered a system glitch and was not completed, or that the company had not received the payment at all. The perpetrator then asks the customer to make a false payment using a prepaid debit card or by providing personal bank account information.
