Business Asked For Bogus Application Fee
A local business was recently targeted by a rather sophisticated scam which attempted to take advantage of an application they had before the Lexington Planning Commission.
Rockbridge Homes and Barns had applied to update the signs at its new location on Waddell Street in Lexington. Since the location is in one of the city’s entrance corridors, an application for a certificate of appropriateness had to be made to the Planning Commission for approval. The application was on the Commission’s agenda for its May 8 meeting, where it was unanimously approved by the Commission.
On May 7, the day before the meeting, Kim Hickman, the office manager for Rockbridge Homes and Barns, received an email from someone identifying themselves as Planning Commission Chair Shannon Spencer.
The email said that the application for the sign had been preapproved and that the business only needed to pay a processing fee for the application.
When Hickman responded and asked for more information, she was sent a follow-up email with an attached document. That document, which bore the Lexington City letterhead, said it was issued by the Planning and Development Department of Rockbridge County and contained an itemized breakdown of different fees totaling to $4,950. Below that were instructions to make a wire transfer payment to a Wells Fargo bank with an Oregon address.
Hickman grew suspicious and contacted the Lexington Planning Department, who confirmed that this was, in fact, a scam.
“Our Planning Commission chair does not email applicants directly about payment and it is only the staff who is in contact with applicants,” Lexington City Planner Arne Glaeser told The News-Gazette in an email. “All application fees are also paid up front so there is no need for additional payments to be made during an approval process.”
“It made me think about people who got scammed, ” Hickman told The News-Gazette last week. “You never think it’s going to happen to you. I think I probably could have fallen for it. It’s scary how much effort was put into this.”
The scam was reported to the Lexington Police Department for further investigation.
