Nye Planning Department warns against billing scam
The Nye County Planning Department and sheriff’s office are advising area residents to beware of a scam for those applying for construction permits.
Nye County Interim Assistant Planning Director Celeste Sandoval told the Pahrump Valley Times that the agency learned of the email scam after an inquiry to the department from an applicant.
Word of mouth
“I was notified by one of our applicants of an email that they had received from someone requesting payments for their public hearing item,” Sandoval said. “I’ve only received two phone calls and to my knowledge no one has fallen victim to this scam.”
Planning Department Interim Director Steve Osborne said that the would-be scammers are using social media in an attempt to carry out their scheme.
Public information
“It looks like they’re sending an email to someone that has an application on the planning commission agenda,” he said. “They’re getting the information about certain projects and applicants’ names from the agenda and obviously, those are public agendas.”
Osborne noted that the scammers are then getting an email address for the applicant of the project from the agenda where they then send a billing email to the applicant in an attempt to trick the person by using their actual information that they have on an agenda item to dupe the individual into believing it’s an actual bill from Nye County, and they are hoping that the applicant will simply respond and pay the fraudulent bill.”
Additionally, Osborne lamented that at present there’s not much the county can do to avoid posting the information on the planning department’s regular agenda.
“We have to follow the Nevada Open Meeting Law which requires a full and complete description of the proposal, the name of the applicant, parcel number and address,” he said. “Right now, I don’t think there’s any way around that.”
Sandoval, meanwhile explained that the planning department never uses email to collect a debt from area residents or entities.
“That’s never done via email because it’s done through the open gov portal,” she said. “Once we accept someone’s application in the open gov portal, it notifies them that they have a payment available, and they have to log back into their account and pay it online or come and drop off a check. We also never accept payments by wire transfer. That’s not one of the methods that we accept payment.”
For additional information, contact the planning department at Phone: (775) 751-4249.
The office is located at 2041 E. Calvada Boulevard Suite 1
Contact Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com
The planning department never uses email to collect a debt from area residents or entities. That's never done via email because It's done through the open gov portal.
Once we accept someone's application in the open gov portal, it notifies them that they have a payment available, and they have to log back into their account and pay it online or come and drop off a check.
We also never accept payments by wire transfer. That's not one of the methods that we accept payment.
— Nye County Interim Assistant Planning Director Celeste Sandoval
