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Scam alert: No, PenLight isn’t coming to disconnect your electricity

By Debbie Cockrell
A Peninsula Light crew worked along the Key Peninsula Highway by Evergreen Elementary School in 2015. A new scam call is demanding payments from customers via cash gift cards. PenLight advises customers to hang up and call them if you receive one of these threats.
A Peninsula Light crew worked along the Key Peninsula Highway by Evergreen Elementary School in 2015. A new scam call is demanding payments from customers via cash gift cards. PenLight advises customers to hang up and call them if you receive one of these threats. David Montesino Staff file, 2015

Peninsula Light wants its customers to know it’s not calling to demand they pay up with a cash card from a store or else risk losing their power.

The member-owned electric cooperative posted Wednesday on Facebook that it was receiving calls about a potential scam targeting customers and demanding payment on balances owed.

Businesses seem to have been the initial targets of the calls, according to Ashley Haynes, public relations for PenLight.

According to the cooperative’s post, the caller pretends to be with PenLight and threatens to disconnect the customer’s power unless the member buys a gift card, “such as an American Express Serve card, from a local retailer, for the amount owed.”

That’s not going to happen, and the customer should hang up, according to the post.

If you get a suspicious call related to the company, PenLight says to call the company at 253-857-5950.

This story was originally published October 31, 2018 at 5:09 PM.

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