New Jerseyans Warned Of Attorney General Impostor [AUDIO]

A fraudulent email that bears the logo and seal of the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General is going around.

The 11-page document invites consumers to apply for their share of the proceeds from a fictitious multimillion-dollar legal settlement. “Anytime someone is offering you some kind of settlement or money and it is completely foreign to you, it is probably not legitimate,” said Attorney General Jeff Chiesa.

The “Notice of Remedy and Settlement of Class Action,” as it was entitled, was sent via email this week. It bears a New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety letterhead and is signed by a fictitious New Jersey Attorney General Edward Thomson. “Now, obviously, my name is Chiesa, not Thomson, so they could’ve done a little homework on that part of it to try to figure out who the Attorney General is,” said Chiesa.

The letter even includes two phone numbers and an email address, which apparently are manned by perpetrators of the scam. “When one of our investigators called one of the numbers, a man speaking with a strong accent identified himself as a worker for Attorney General Thomson,” said Chiesa.

“Unfortunately, because of all the technology that’s readily available to people, people are able to create documents that really look official,” said Chiesa. “But, there isn’t any situation where we would so sloppily accumulate personal data from people.”

If you receive a similar document by letter or email, call the Division of Consumer Affairs’ Consumer Service Center Hotline at 800-292-5846 or 973-504-6200.