Scammers Increasingly Using Texas Retail Providers' Names in Disconnection Payment Con

By Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

Scammers in Texas employing a disconnection payment dodge to scam customers out of money are increasingly threatening victims with disconnection by using the name of Texas retail electric providers.

Under the disconnection scam, which has been targeting utility customers nationwide over the past few years, scammers call customers and threaten customers with disconnection of utility service, unless they receive immediate payment, typically through some untraceable, non-refundable method, including GreenDot or other prepaid cards, PayPal, and/or wire transfers.

Since the scammers must threaten disconnection, the earliest examples of these scams used the utility's name in threatening the customer, since in most markets that is the entity with the authority to disconnect a customer. In Texas, the earliest reports of these scams indicated they were targeting customers at municipal utilities or utilities outside of ERCOT (where the local utility remains the point of contact for disconnection), or were using the brand of an ERCOT TDU offering choice to threaten disconnection and extract payment, even though such utilities are no longer involved in customer billing (AEP Texas issued a warning to customers earlier this year about the scam).

Now, however, perhaps becoming more sophisticated about the design of the Texas market, scammers are increasingly using the name of retail electric providers to threaten disconnection. In publicly warning customers about the scam, TXU Energy, Reliant, and Spark Energy said that their names had been used by scammers.

Several other REPs, including Liberty Power, have publicly warned customers about the scam, but it was unclear if their particular brand has been used by scammers, or if they were merely being proactive upon seeing the use of other REPs' names.

In response to the increasing scams facing Texas electric customers, TXU has launched an online portal of anti-fraud resources, at txu.com/fraud

TXU said that in addition to the disconnection scam, common scams it encounters are:

• Identity thieves setting up service at a different address or sometimes multiple addresses using a victim's personal information.

• Scammers offering to sign up unsuspecting consumers on suspiciously inexpensive rates as a way to steal and use their identity.