Scammers posing as ‘Apple Support’ hitting Notheast Ohio neighborhoods hard with phone calls

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Scammers are hitting some neighborhoods of Northeast Ohio so hard right now, experts say the calls are abusive and harassing.

Sheryl Harris with the Cuyahoga County Department of Consumer Affairs says, “It’s really abusive, the number of these calls.”

They’re pretending to be Apple support agents, looking for personal information.

“They say your iCloud account has been breached,” Harris said.

Investigators say they’ve noticed scammers are focusing on certain area codes or pockets of town-- sometimes calling the same person 15 to 20 times a day.

“While they are happening to you, you’re going to get many of them,” Harris said.

Harris says the calls are hard to block, because each one tends to come from a different number.

But, she says the worst thing you can do is pick up the phone and engage.

448 which is a dangerous game... because that lets scammers know you are there to answer your phone and they tend to target you a little bit more.

She says people should write themselves a note, reminding themselves not to pick up an unknown number.

Or, they can just turn the phone volume down or off completely.

“Other wise you’ll be driven crazy and you’ll be tempted to pick up and talk to these guys,” she said.

If you don’t interact, Harris says the callers usually move on in a few days.

“The best revenge is to report it and do tell us the times that you got all those calls,” Harris said.

You can report those calls to the Scam Squad here.

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