Peru police chief: Be aware of recent scam

Peru Police Chief Bob Pyszka warned residents Thursday of a scam making its way through the Illinois Valley after Wednesday’s storm, telling residents not to give out any information and to hang up.

Peru residents have reported to police they are receiving phone calls from a local number saying they are a roofing company that wants to come to the residence to give them an estimate for roof damage from Wednesday’s storms.

Some citizens are reporting the person on the phone knew information about them.

“What they are doing is called spoofing,” the chief said. “Spoofing is a type of scam, in which a criminal disguise an email address, display name, phone number, text message or website URL to convince a target they are interacting with a known trusted source.”