Thief River Falls Police Dept.
102 First Street West
Thief River Falls, MN 56701
218-681-6161

• Beware of fraudulent phone calls offering to sign you up for the “Do Not Call” list. Registering through the MDC is the only way to get your number on the list, and it will not be calling you to verify your registration.

• Your phone number will stay on the list for four years, then you will have to register again.

• There is no charge to get your number on or off the list.

• Your privacy will be protected. Information on the list is considered private data and will not be shared with anyone.

• Do not expect immediate results. After the first “Do Not Call” list is sold to telemarketers on January 1, the law allows telemarketers 30 days to remove you phone number from there calling lists. Telemarketers will then have to purchase a new updated “Do Not Call” list every three months. As a result, it may take up to 90 days for some telemarketers to receive the list containing your phone number.

•  Do not expect all telemarketing calls to stop. The law exempts certain businesses and organizations. Non-profit and political organizations will still be able to call you. In addition, any businesses that have prior relationship with you, and businesses that do not intend to complete a sale over the phone, but rather complete the transaction in a face-to-face setting at a later date, will be able to call you.

  At any time, you can request to have your name removed from the call lists by writing to the Minnesota Department of Commerce, 85 Seventh Place East, Suite 500 , St. Paul , MN 55101-2198 . You can call the Commerce Department at 1-800-921-4110 or access this information on the Web at http://www.state.mn.us then scroll down to the information about Telemarketing Do Not Call List.

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Protect your business from being victimized by fraud or theft.

Require photo ID as a policy to accept checks or credit cards from unknown customers.  Ask customers to remove Driver’s License/ID Card from their purse or wallet, so you can determine for sure that a photo has not been glued in place, and the photo matches the person in front of you.

Do NOT accept paper ID unless they have a Drivers license with the corner cut off and photo match.  Paper ID’s are used in a majority of our arrest cases, and also in a large percentage of cases in which no suspect can be identified.  “PAID” stamps, time and date stamps, and state employee’s individual stamps have all been stolen from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety- stamps mean NOTHING on a paper Drivers license

Don’t be afraid to ask for 2^nd ID when you feel uncomfortable with card, check or ID presented by your customer.  When Dayton’s instituted a second form of ID/Credit Card policy at their stores, the fraud losses in high check loss stores were reduced 50% in one year from the previous year.

Make suspicious check or credit card passers wait – Legitimate customers will not mind a short wait while you verify checks are not stolen (by calling # listed on check or in a phone book).  DO NOT let customers take merchandise to their car while waiting for verification of check/OK on card.  Many businesses lose the merchandise and possibility of ID of suspects or car by allowing this to happen.

Train employees in security procedures so they can stop fraud on the front end.  Make sure your employees have a standard set of practices to follow in handling checks and credit card transactions.  If the procedures are deviated from, you can determine whether or not the employee acted properly, or if the procedures need to be changed for the future.  Make offices/desks secure – Challenge people in areas they don’t belong.

Verify credit transactions by phone – make sure you have the card owner.  Make someone sign a receipt at delivery, so a witness can ID a suspect, and charges can be brought for forgery if the signature is forged.

Do background checks on employees / Have checks and balances in place – many thefts and scams run with “inside help”.  All of the really large employee theft/embezzlement cases involve employees with control over checkbooks/ billing procedures – with no outside “check and balance” oversight to verify that funds are being handled correctly and bills are being paid to actual businesses, employees and vendors.  Have auditing procedures in place at your business.

Have a computer security plan – e-commerce requires oversight and protection of data, web sites, and servers.  Get expert help here.

Don’t accept bad checks and cards as a “cost of doing business” – do what is needed to prosecute thieves so repeat offenses can be stopped.  All the businesses and citizens of you city will benefit by making it harder and more unpleasant for the criminals to run these scams and frauds.

Make SURE your credit receipts don’t contain all info needed for fraud – name, number and expiration.  Anyone with this information can chare items to your account by phone or on the Internet and not “Court – Recognized” identification of the suspect is possible in most cases.

Get Newer Credit Card Processing Machines that will block out all or most of the numbers so that receipts can not be recovered from the trash or misused by crooked employees.

Guard your checks and credit cards carefully – many checks and cards are stolen from businesses and counterfeited and passed all over (including other states where prosecution may be much more difficult).

Protect yourself and your family from being victimized.

Protect your checks and credit cards.  They are more valuable than cash to criminals. Don’t leave them in your car or desk unless secured.  Many times people will go to the park to run or walk the dog etc. and they will put the wallet or purse under the seat or in the trunk when they get to the park.  THIEVES are watching and will break into your car the second you are out of sight.  We caught someone doing this. It took them one and a half minutes to wait for the person to get out of sight and 20 seconds to get into the car and steal the wallet or purse.

Don’t put your Drivers License # on your checks.  This makes it easy to get a false ID make up. This also requires the business to ask you to show you D.L., which is a benefit to you.  It can be a pain, but it causes the thief/forger to work harder to alter you D.L., or get delayed or arrested if the business is sharp enough to pick up on the fraud being perpetrated.  If your D.L. is stolen, go to the Department of Motor Vehicle and “flag” your license.  

Keep all credit card receipts safe.  Many criminals use number off receipts to defraud.  Take you receipts with you.  Check whether or not you whole number shows on the receipts.  With the whole number and expiration date, anyone can order goods by phone or over the Internet and these are virtually impossible to prosecute, because no one can ID the person who presented the card number for payment.

Shred credit card offers you get in the mail.  Thieves steal mail and garbage to these offers.  One woman was arrested in Washington County with a station wagon full of mail.  She had been following the postal truck and emptying the boxes a block behind him.  She had many prior arrests for forgery and credit card fraud.  Don’t leave mail in your mailbox for pickup by your postal carrier.  Put them in a postal mailbox that can’t be opened.  People steal mail for account numbers and to copy/counterfeit your checks and ID’s.

Don’t leave mail in your outdoor box for pickup.  Many criminals are stealing letters from mailboxes which are left for he mailman.  Most of those have checks, which can be counterfeited, or Credit Card numbers, which can be used by thieves to purchase items.

Remove your identity from the Internet.      A Police Officer demonstrated that with a business card, he was able to get a credit report, apply for a home equity loan on the person’s house, and even find out where the person’s kids went to school and their bus route.  This info was all available online.  Most of you have your social security number and other data available on line.

Tell the 3 credit bureaus NOT to give credit OK unless verifying with you by phone. Many people end up having to do this (put on a “Fraud Alert”) after their identity has been stolen. People are not just using their checks and credit cards, but are opening new credit in the victim’s name and buying cars or running up huge debt on new credit cards.

NEVER give your card number out to someone calling you.   Make charges only when you call to order something.  I always get the person’s name that I did the transaction with in case my card number is compromised, there will be a possible suspect for the police to talk to.  Credit Card Fraud Investigators and bank personnel will never call and ask for your card number and expiration date. They will never ask for your social security number, unless they are following up on a police report you made about Identity Theft or related crime.

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