From Sarah McCully Posner
Scam Email Alert
Hi everyone!
Yesterday someone sent out an email to many members of the Guild asking for gift cards for a Veterans Hospice and that I would be responsible for reimbursement of these cards using my name and PHG title. This email was a scam. We are not collecting gift cards for anything as noble as that idea was.
This is the second time this year that someone has taken my name/title off the PHG website and targeted members with scams. Last time it seemed to mainly be the board members, and this time it seems they targeted more members of the guild. They sent their email from an email address I do not own or have knowledge of and so I had no idea anyone had gotten these emails until several members emailed and texted me. I have sent messages to everyone I could, as well as on the PHG Google Group so the word is getting out, but I thought it prudent to have this message sent out just in case.
I am sorry this has happened again.
A couple of quick notes about these sorts of things:
1) Always check the sender’s email address to see if that matches what you have for the person who is contacting you. My email address will always come up at Sarah_mccully@yahoo.com. If the email address doesn’t match that, I did not send the message (but you are always welcome to ask me about it too!).
2) If you think something strange is going on, listen to your gut and write the person an email. Do not respond to the message that was sent to you – compose a new message using the contact information you have and ask the person if they sent it. If you don’t have their email address, contact someone else in the guild and see if they have heard anything about this. I had 4 board members and 2 members contact me right away, so board members seem to be some of the first to know.
3) I will never ask for gift cards so please always know if someone has contacted you for this purpose, it is not a legitimate ask and delete the email.
You can read more about gift card scams on the website of the Federal Trade Commission.
Sadly, I have no way of stopping scammers like this, as much as I would like to.
Thank you so much for your understanding.
Sarah