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With the holiday season coming in, residents should be on the watch for scamming calls coming in.

Andalusia local Lorrette Mott is a recent victim of scam calls and wants to warn everyone that receives the calls.

“I received a call from a foreign person that said they were from Verizon,” Mott said. “I answered because I figured it actually was Verizon. “He said that they were redoing towers and that I had to do this and do that to make sure that my service wasn’t cut off. I didn’t even realize it was a scam until they asked me for my social security number.”

Mott said after she received a statement from Verizon stating that her bill was extremely high, she went directly to the store to figure out what happened.

“I had to talk to several people before they figured out what was going on,” Mott said. “I got there and I couldn’t remember my pin number so I had to talk to customer service. Once they got me in my account it said that somebody in New Jersey bought several iPhones. I don’t even know anybody in New Jersey and I have never been to New Jersey.”

She said that since it is the holiday season, she is scared that several other elderly people will pick up the phone and become a victim to the scam.

“I know that if there is an elderly person like me that receives a call claiming to be Verizon, they are going to pick up,” Mott said. “There’s no telling how much money that person got off the iPhones, but I’m sure they will do it again since it is the holiday season.”

Andalusia Verizon manager Gage Johnson said to make sure to hang up the phone if somebody claims to be from Verizon and especially if they ask for a social security number.

“We never ask for your social security number,” Johnson said. “You can’t even use those for pin numbers anymore. There is not a whole lot we can do, because a lot of it is coming over seas. A lot of times, they will mask their number to where it looks like somebody you know or somebody in the area.”

Johnson said they do offer a spam filter that can be added to someone’s account.

“It is $2.99 a month,” Johnson said. “

We can set that up for people. It still is kind of the early stages, so we haven’t had much feedback, but I say no news is good news.”